


All The Stars Are Falling

by girlskylark



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alfor is basically Poseidon, Allura and Lance are Siblings, Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Declarations Of Love, Denial of Feelings, Finnegan Skybarker, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Hance is NOT end game, Hunk & Lance (Voltron) Friendship, Hunk's family - Freeform, Insecure Lance (Voltron), Keith (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, Keith and Shiro are Siblings, Lance (Voltron) is a Mess, Lance is basically Persephone, M/M, Magic-Users, Mythology - Freeform, Smol bit of Hance, Underworld, Zarkon is basically Hades, broganes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-29
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2018-12-21 10:41:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 72,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11942421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlskylark/pseuds/girlskylark
Summary: Keith is caught housing the runaway son of Alfor, Lance. As punishment, Keith's father, Zarkon, turns Lance mortal, wipes his memory of Keith, and vows that this will be the start of his war against Alfor if Keith is incapable of finding Lance and convincing Lance to fall in love with him again. This would all be fine and good until the mess of family matters leads to Lance's distrust, hatred, and sworn rivalry against Keith for turning him mortal.Stuck in Earthrealm in the body of his human-self, Lance is living with, owns a dog with, and is dating the one and only Hunk Garrett. Recovering from a head injury that led to Lance's temporary memory loss, he is prone to the dangers that come with being a partial demigod when Underworld monsters are afoot, and gods and goddesses become attracted to the town he lives in, trying to sway him one way or the other. His loyalties are what will ultimate depend whether or not he ever regains his godhood, or accept mortality in favor of starting war with Zarkon, the god who allowed monsters to roam Earthrealm in the first place.





	1. prologue

It wasn’t at all a coincidence that Keith met Lance. Something as pure and as perfect as _Lance_ and who they had become because of their coming-together—something like that could _never_ be just _coincidence_. Eventually, at some point, Keith would have run across Lance’s tracks—either on purpose or by accident, like the first time around. Either way, it happened before Keith’s father ever caught wind of that boy’s intrusion into their Underworld.

The Realm of the Dead seemed to interest Lance in a way it probably… shouldn’t have. He marveled at their Dead Forests the way he probably did to flowers, butterflies, baby sea turtles making their trip back to the ocean. He stood in awe before the roots that twisted into the shape of corpses. He’d stand at the base of these trees and would find trunks where the eyes of the corpses were sunken in to the shape of holes drilled into the bark. And there, Keith would find him in the midst of a staring contest with a man or woman who could no longer blink—but Lance tried anyways. 

The Forest itself was a graveyard of souls, ensnared in the nature of their Underworld where eventually, perhaps centuries from now, the shape of the corpse would become more defined, sprout from a rising branch, and stumble into the Underworld, right to that particular soul’s designated afterlife. But with time functioning the way it did, this all happened simultaneously in the future, in the past, constantly reoccurring in an infinite loop of souls thousands of years before and after the present moment Keith walked in the Forest.

It was all a process Keith would later explain to Lance. A lot of the gods didn’t tend to _linger_ around The Realm of the Dead. Whether that was because of Keith’s father or the fact that everything was _dead_ was up for debate, but Keith often thought it was because of his father.

_Anyone_ would think it was because of his father after meeting the man.

His father was currently the reason why Keith wished he wasn’t in the Underworld. He wished he didn’t have the responsibility and the expectations of being a son of Zarkon. He wished being a god of the Underworld wasn’t such a _scandal_ —

“Bring my son in.”

Keith’s glare hadn’t quite dissolved by the time he walked through the doors of his father’s throne room. The skeletal guards left in an instant, in those slim wisps of black smoke rising and disappearing through the ceiling that circled with an infinite dome of stardust. It was an atrium of sorts with a vaulted ceiling, spiked columns that disappeared into the black clouds, and deep red hues. The floor was pure marble, featuring a milky red surface to mimic the liquid that flowed in all of their veins. 

As he walked, the glare from the light fixtures caused the floor beneath him to shift like flowing water, clouding in vivid colors beneath Keith’s feet with each step. It followed the shadow of his cloak across the floor, but all of that was secondary to the look on his face when he saw, and could already sense, the lecture preparing itself on the tip of Zarkon’s tongue.

Zarkon was, like most gods, critical of what his sons did. It was why Keith’s brother, Takashi, was more or less the epitome of a perfect son. It was why Takashi sat in Zarkon’s shadow for the spectacle, distinctly disappointed in whatever Keith did to piss their father off so royally.

_But you probably already fucking know what it is,_ Keith thought bitterly, catching his brother’s indifferent gaze as he strode up to the base of his father’s throne.

“Why am I here? I have work to attend to,” Keith demanded, arms folded over his chest.

His father tapped his fingers against his curled armrest. His fingers were clawed, skin dark grey as he lifted and steepled his hands together in front of him. “This is far more important,” he said as he pointedly plucked off his glove finger-by-finger.

“The fuck it is, considering you’ve rarely ever called me up here before now. What, suddenly you want to see my face on occasion?” Keith hissed out.

“Tone, Keith,” Takashi warned, but their father simply raised his hand between them, silencing them both. Keith scowled at Takashi, stepping to the side as if to gauge a better angle with which to chuck a knife at his brother. They stared each other done until their father spoke again.

“This is urgent. And you will listen to me, and what I have to say on the matter, before you speak a word. Understood?” their father hissed at Keith. He was used to hearing that tone of voice, but rarely was it ever directly towards _him_.

Keith straightened, his tense eyes turning towards Zarkon, all while fully aware of his brother looking intensely at the both of them. Zarkon descended the steps of his throne, where it curved like two monstrous horns over the room. Keith’s eyes rose up to meet his father’s black scleras as he slowly lowered himself down, his hands clasping behind his back.

With a sigh, he said, “It’s difficult to tell if you intentionally meant to defy me. You have been so obedient until now—if you can call it that.” Keith was entirely used to his father’s stoney exterior, but that solid, unwavering glare just seemed far more intimidated now. He knew where this was going and it sent shivers down his arms that he hoped he concealed. Fear meant punishment. “I never expected you to involve yourself with… frivolous tendencies our relatives tend to fall back on.”

“I don’t understand. I haven’t done anything wrong,” Keith insisted, but ‘ _frivolous_ ’ reminded him too much of certain ideas his father didn’t agree with. The sort Keith was entertaining, and _knew_ more than _anyone_ that he was far too invested in it. It was one of the reasons why Keith never properly met his mother, or why Zarkon only ever associated with Keith and Takashi out of necessity. He hoped to maintain some sort of respect from family when they discovered that both of his sons were just as fearsome as the god of the Underworld himself.

Being the son of a god meant that _frivolous tendencies_ would only hinder their overall success as, debatably, the strongest of the gods. They controlled life and death. They had something to hold over all of the gods in that regard.

Zarkon’s deep eye sockets blended the black sclera of his eyes with shadows. There was just a simple glint from the light that told Keith that there were eyes in his skull at all. His father looked at him directly, jaw set tightly, teeth grinding together as he said, “Takashi has informed me that you’ve been harboring Alfor’s son. The minor ocean god, Lance.”

Keith refused to bristle, or show any indication that his brother’s betrayal registered at all. His chest felt like it was constricting with some murderous inclination that whispered for him to grab the throat of some nearby mechanical, lifeless guard and decapitate it. He wanted to hear the bones crumble between his fingers and turn to dust. He wanted to force-feed the powder to Takashi, or maybe poison him with it discretely so his brother could wonder over who the hell would ever want to kill the precious, perfect son of Zarkon.

“Is this true.”

“No.”

“Look at me when you say it.”

Keith pointedly tipped his chin up, and turned his deadly scowl over to his father. He looked between his father’s eyes, where his skin puckered and condensed under his fury, and his nonexistent eyebrows speckled with a line of piercings. His pale grey skin showed hollow curves beneath his cheekbones—the ghost of what sort of gaunt features Keith adopted from him.

Keith sucked in a deep breath and let it out with a simple, “No, I do not have Lance. Wherever he is, I can safely say that it isn’t here.”

“Blatantly _lying_ convinces me that you have no regard for your inferior position to me,” his father hissed out, leaning in as if being at eye level would convince Keith that they were ever on the same playing field. He reached a hand to grip Keith’s shoulder, pinching the muscle there as he dug his thumb into the hollow of Keith’s neck. “I know _every_ soul that comes in here. Normally minor gods and messengers are under the radar as they mix in with everything else, but I can _sense him_ , Kogane. The _truth_ , son.”

Keith could feel his flesh sizzling where Zarkon twisted his hand up over Keith’s neck. SO perhaps this wasn’t the first time he ever defied his father—they all went through rebellious stages—but Zarkon was always quick to snuff out disobedience. Keith found out the hard way that his father wouldn’t even hesitate to burn his fingers through Keith’s neck. Coming back from that was always a shit-show. That was centuries ago when Takashi put Keith’s head back in place and nursed him back up to proper health. Several days _wasted_ , mind you.

Unfortunately, that meant Keith was shit at hiding the fact that it _hurt_. It seared into his skin and into his memories where he recalled losing his head the first time. “D-Does it matter that he’s here anyways? What p-purpose do you have worrying about it? I have it under control—otherwise I would have come to you for guidance on the matter.”

“Clearly you are not qualified to deal with this sort of disaster. Especially when Alfor comes complaining to me in search of Lance’s life force—as if the boy went and got himself killed by one of those _beasts_ ,” Zarkon hissed out, shoving Keith away.

He staggered to gain back his footing, hands going up to his throat where he felt the sweltering indentations his father left behind. _That_ would definitely leave a scar for a year. He loathed the scars his father left behind—whether physically or mentally—because then he was no longer that marble image depicted in sculptures and artwork. Perfect—flawless—spotless.

“Is that what this is about then? The beasts?” Keith countered as his father paced away from him, only to swing back around, teeth bared.

“This _isn’t_ about the damn _beasts_ , boy! This is about you, and the fact that you’ve been fucking around with that—that _boy_! You are _not_ allowed to associate with anyone outside of this Realm, do you understand me? I thought I made that explicitly clear when it came to your mother.”

“I understand that part—I never saw her, so there is nothing to worry about that—”

“Yes, but you capture Alfor’s son and expect us both to be okay with it?” he snarled at Keith. A wisp of glowering flickers of shadows brought his father directly before Keith, blackened skin singed with burning embers around his bare shoulders and arms, and shining on the golden edge of his breastplate. The grey in his face was overcome with the sleek blackness of his eye sockets.

Keith bristled, shoulders bunching up to his ears as he faced the image that haunted kids nightmares and his own for a large chunk of his adolescence. But that was hundreds of thousands of years ago, and he knew better than to lie down and take this bullshit.

“I did _no such thing!_ I would never kidnap _anyone_. He came on his own accord and I simply made no attempt to tell him otherwise. He wasn’t doing any harm coming here—”

“Did it ever occur to you that he only came to the Underworld to disrupt the balance of our Realms? To take the soul of some mortal he once fell in love with—”

“ _No_ , he _wouldn’t—_ ”

“Why, because his father never did?” Zarkon remarked, putrid eyes turning to frost that fractured out across the flecks of his charred, black skin. Keith knew the dozen reasons why his father loathed Alfor as much as he did. The top reason was Alfor’s spectacular fashion in which he fucked his way through humanity _and_ the gods. He went so far as to steal the soul of a past lover from the Underworld several centuries ago. Keith was certain it was all very dramatic and enthralling—good enough for a Hollywood box-office best seller—but Zarkon wasn’t that easily entertained by Alfor’s fuckery.

“Is it because you live under the _delusion_ that he loves you? That he could _only ever_ love a Guardian of the Underworld and not some poor wretched mortal?” 

The heat scorching the inside of Keith’s chest blazed. It set his tongue on fire, and spiked his words as he spat out, “ _Don’t_ talk about him like that. Is this what you called me here for? to harass me?”

Zarkon grabbed him by the jaw, yanking him forward with the bite of his frosted fingers clinging to Keith’s blazing flesh. He snarled, “I brought you here to see if what Takashi said was true. You’re _spineless_ if you’ve given into the mortal pleasures other gods endorse. Lust and love make us _weak_. If you ever plan to prove to me that you can be both the son I raised and the coward gods like Lance make you, you must go by _my rules_. I would never encourage such behavior, especially from one of my own. If I can even call you that.

“Either you do as I say, or you enable me to start a war with Alfor over the treachery of both our sons. Do you accept my terms?” he all but sneered into Keith’s ear, tightening his blistering fingers against Keith’s jawbone.

Keith grimaced, lips pulling back from his teeth as he considered the consequences of war against Alfor. The destruction of such an event would lead to a mass extinction event past the extent of The Black Plague, and more on the level of a full on Ice Age. They’d decimate entire continents if driven that far with their rampages. Keith’s father wouldn’t even bat an eye—it would just lead to Alfor’s retaliation in an attempt to save the mortals he so admired.

Zarkon always called Alfor a sap for loving mortals as much as he did. “It’s why there’s so many halflings on land these days. Or in the sea—depending on whether or not you think manatees are a fuck-up between Alfor and some mortal woman.” Keith never really thought to sneer at his father for those remarks until he met Lance and realized… maybe there wasn’t anything entirely wrong with the way Alfor thought of people before they wound up in Keith’s sector of the Underworld.

They were tolerable creatures.

Keith’s compliance started to show in how his shoulders slackened, and how he glanced hatefully at his brother. Takashi only seemed to sober at the look, leaning against his armrest and watching as his father released Keith’s face and let him step aside.

“Fine. I accept your terms,” Keith hissed, thinking to himself about how differently this encounter went. He’d been expecting his father to make a spectacle. He was never the type to step aside and let Keith do as he pleased. But Keith would never consider Zarkon… Oh, what was the mortal word for it? a helicopter parent.

It was a mistake to think Zarkon would take this lightly.

As his father walked up the steps of his throne, the door to the room opened once more. It echoed along with the furious snarling that caused Keith’s heart to sink. He recognized those bitter words, and the colorful swearing along the lines of, “Get your fucking hands off me—you all smell like _fish shit_ —let me _—fuck!_ —let me _go!_ ”

Keith spun around and was halfway to running over there when his father snapped his fingers. 

Every muscle in Keith’s body stuttered to a stop. It wasn’t some… cliché bullshit that led his father to stop Keith in his tracks. Instead, it was the sound of Lance’s screaming, ripped from the arms of the guards, and yanked beneath the marble surface under his feet. He fell through it with hardly a ripple against the milky red surface.

Lance’s scream silenced to a mere, muffled shout as the current of blood swept Lance straight under Keith’s feet.

“No—!” Keith shouted, chasing after Lance before he disappeared under his father’s pedestal, along with the elegantly spiked columns framing the horns of the throne.

Lance floated up through the marble of one of those same columns, and hung suspended there, hands against the glassy surface, figure shrouded in opaque red. Keith darted up to him, catching his eyes and holding them as he screamed, voice cracking, “ _Lance!_ Lance—I’m sorry—”

In the midst of his panicking, the sound of his father’s amusement faded in. Keith held his hands to where Lance’s fists pressed into the marble—the inches of the transparent column surface separating them. As Lance brought his face close, Keith could see the liquid starting to take effect on the speckled blue spots sprouting across his face. They combed through his perfect brown hair swimming in blood.

Keith looked around frantically, his heart racing. His brother seemed just as startled as him, and was already on his feet by the time Keith looked to him despeartely. Takashi rushed over, saying, “What are you _doing?_ Are you _planning_ to start a war? Keith agreed to your terms, Father.”

“These are my terms,” Zarkon said, crossing his legs as he gestured gracefully towards the column where Lance was starting to shift into his Homerealm form. His legs twisted together, merging into a freckled blue fishtail. His hands laid flat over Keith’s as tears pricked at Keith’s eyes.

“What are you going to do to him?” he demanded, seething as he twisted around. The marble was hot under his one hand he kept with Lance’s. “Alfor will be _furious—_ ”

“I’m sure he will be,” Zarkon mused aloud, lips twisting into a bemused grin. “You can thank Keith for this goddamn carnival of fuckupery he started by letting Lance sneak in through his back window like the common whore he is.” He glanced over at where Keith and Takashi stood together, fuming over the fact that neither of them wanted a war named after them. Neither of them wanted mortals to suffer—not really, anyways. A war would mean that both of them would be swept under the shit-storm Zarkon threatened to let reign.

“The impending war depends on you, Kogane. As my son you are expected to maintain the balance, and this is my proposal: Lance will be stripped of his godhood. He will lose all memory of you, and of living in the Underworld with you. He will spawn in the body of his mortal counterpart, and it is your duty to find him. If you can convince him to fall in love with you again, I will return his godhood to him. Until then, he will live in Earthrealm as a mortal.

“And if you never find him or convince him to love you again… I am sure Alfor would more than happily shred the skin from your bones for me. It would just prove how fickle love is, and how idiotic it was for you to fall for it.”


	2. deal with the devil

On any other day, Keith would hate to see his brother. Seeing his brother was like asking for the day to fuck you up in a way that could only be described as a raging headache spawned by the complete and total idiocy of talking to someone with book smarts about the logic of street smarts. His concrete logic felt like a brick being bludgeoned into the side of Keith’s head on a day he really could have done without being bludgeoned on.

And that day, he was prepared to _do_ the bludgeoning without concern for the consequences.

Keith was quick to disappear as soon as he could, and he anticipated Takashi’s arrival the second he set foot outside of his empty estate. The realization of seeing it there without the expectation of company seemed harrowing. He never _really_ felt the desire to be with people as much as he felt the desire to be alone, but alone was never quite “alone” now, was it? A year might not have been enough to establish stability in a new home, but it was certainly enough to establish the profound, unexplainable dependency Keith now felt for Lance.

He’d kill Takashi for ripping that stability from him.

The bloody tiles rippled underneath him, ruffled by the fury coursing through Keith’s veins as he stormed for the nearest portal. The picturesque archways were doused in such a deep, never-ending blackness that rippled under the curve of Keith’s cloak pulled towards it.

“Where are you planning on going!” Takashi’s voice shouted after him, chasing him down the corridor.

“Home. To see the damage Lance left behind,” he spat out, barely able to look anywhere other than Takashi’s feet before he turned and let the portal tug on him. He let it drag him through as though he was attempting to headbutt his way through a solid brick wall instead of a shadow portal. He heard his brother’s footsteps all the way through, and even after the raw black liquid sucked around Keith and pitched him out the other side. He practically flew through the torn, heavy, sopping-wet curtains covering the shadow portal.

Takashi splashed through and landed smoothly behind Keith. Keith was combusting inside from the second he left the throne room, and his heart was clenched in this ever-tightening wrench from seeing Lance look at him through his father’s bloody marble column.

Honestly, he felt like rupturing his brother’s skull with a machete.

They heard the liquid portal drip away, leaving an echo through the decimated foyer, with its domed ceiling, and the… unfortunate… new pool collecting on the floors. It rippled around their feet as Keith listened for the portal to disappear completely when he realized that the dripping was coming from the water damage Lance left in his wake.

Before Takashi could even open his mouth, Keith hissed, “ _Don’t_ fucking tell me you didn’t expect him to start a war over this. You know _exactly_ how he is about Alfor.”

“Sure, he’s always been annoyed with Alfor for sleeping around with mortals, but—” he paused, avoiding the movement of one of Keith’s decapitated sculptures in the foyer. There were several of them—soldiers in the form of marble. They never ceased to fall into their obedient places the moment Keith walked by. Their movements were limited though, but even their stone-still places couldn’t stop their eyes from following Takashi as he followed after Keith down the hall. “They never fail to unnerve me,” Takashi confessed in a whisper.

“They can probably hear you. As I have a thousand times before,” he sighed with a disgusted sneer. “If you weren’t immortal, I’d _slaughter you_ right now. In case you don’t remember the time you had a fling with a nymph.”

“She was beautiful, I admit—but she wasn’t a _god_ , Keith,” he remarked. “You _had_ to know you were stepping into dangerous territory, enabling Lance like that.”

“I did nothing!”

“ _You_ let him wander into the Forests, and you didn’t stop him or tell him to go home, so he just _invited himself in_ like he owned the place. Father’s right—he could have been looking for a soul to bring back. Why else would he have spawned in the Forests?”

“All the gods know what bringing souls back do,” Keith muttered. “Lance is smarter than that.”

“Clearly not.”

“ _Clearly,_ you need to shut the fuck up before I strangle you,” he seethed, fists clenching in front of him as he fought the urge to. “Now if you _don’t mind_ , you’re helping me find Lance.”

Takashi released a heavy sigh, folding his arms as the two of them stepped out of the five-inch-deep pool of water on the first floor of Keith’s estate. They climbed the steps, and at this point they didn’t bother avoiding the soaked carpet, or the trickle of water running down the side where the railing was cut out like a boulder had flung itself against it. Takashi leaned over the edge of it, scowling down at the sculpture that was now shattered in the water below.

It might have been gaudy of a god to keep sculptures around like this, and immature of them to be furious when they broke. It would have been different had the sculptures been elsewhere—carved by an artist for some beautiful goddess looking for a self portrait.

But in the Underworld, all sculptures were infused with the souls of people who pledged allegiance to their god, or to the Underworld itself. It was an honor, however a boring one. Takashi could never understand the dedication it took to stand still for a thousand years, keeping watch over someone’s estate. He had several of his own—friends of his, heroes from a mortal war centuries ago—and one of their fingers chipped off recently. And he thought _that_ was bad.

He was now looking at the shards of one of Keith’s fallen comrades.

“Lance never… _did_ understand the concept of my sculptures,” Keith sighed from higher up, glancing around towards the domed ceiling. “I’ll have to restore them some other time.”

“I am _not_ helping you find Lance in the meantime,” Takashi hissed. “That is _not_ my problem. You started this. And Father wouldn’t appreciate me meddling in whatever… the fuck it is you’re planning. Ask someone else—someone who probably has a better sense of Earthrealm than I do. Try Pidge.”

Keith flinched at the idea, and even Takashi had the sense to wince.

“I’ll… consider it. But you helped start this shitastrophe, so you are _going_ to help me finish it. I always pegged you as a fucking tattletale. I shouldn’t have let Lance wander as far as your sector.”

“No point in regretting it now,” his brother sighed, crossed arms tensing. His uniform was angular, with sharp, pointed shoulder pads and a deep purple half-cloak pinned over his right arm. Keith felt as though the vice his heart was in was about to rupture every last blood vessel in his body.

They reached the point in the house where some low buzzing played in the background. Keith followed after it, glancing sparingly at the wall where one of the paintings was completely obscured by a guard’s body that was forced through it, and now stuck head-first through the wall. Takashi stationed his hands on his hips and looked down, back over to where Keith was seriously starting to lose any shit he dared to hold onto.

“Well. Looks like you need to do some redecorating,” Takashi mused before waltzing through the archway. The speakers in the room were releasing that horrid buzz, and just as Takashi was about to turn them off, he heard the _shink_ of metal releasing from its sheath. “Keith—Don’t—” Takashi started, but Keith was already screaming and chucking his knives at the speakers on the walls, and then to the system causing all the ruckus.

The speakers splintered and wheezed out of focus before sparking where Keith’s knife was lodged between the buttons and through the screen. Takashi slapped his hand over his face, and dragged it down the scar struck across is cheeks.

The damp, slippery floor hissed around Keith’s ankles, rising up in a steam as he stormed across the room and grabbed the nearest fallen couch. He hefted it by the legs and swung it. It left the ground and flew from his arms, crashing into the raised wall over Takashi’s head. He stepped aside to avoid the collapse. Before Takashi could say or do anything, Keith was already on a rampage, chucking fallen furniture that started to smoke wherever Keith’s hands left scolding marks and embers.

It took a while before Keith eventually broke through one of his stain-glass windows. By that point, Takashi was trying to put out the fire from a corpse in the sitting room. The whole house smelled like burning flesh, and whether it was from the dead guards or the scar forming on Keith’s neck—he couldn’t quite tell. Keith was too busy chucking stools through the window—couches—tables—the mantel he broke off the wall.

The wood and stone pieces clattered in the garden, strewn over bushes and shrubs. Keith shoved through the balcony doors and looked down after it all. _Not good enough_ , he thought furiously. If he couldn’t destroy everything he wanted just by throwing it out a goddamn window, then he’d just have to do better than that.

He all but sprinted past Takashi, who was still batting a rug over the corpse’s body before realizing that Keith was on the run. “Whoa! Hey—What are you doing?” he demanded, abandoning the rug and chasing after his brother to where he was grabbing statues by their torsos and hefting them over his head. They probably weighed more than your average elephant with the size they came in—two, three times the size of Keith himself. He started for the foyer door—it was the largest door in the house, and fit the statues through nicely. He started to set them all out in the garden, ignoring the looks his brother gave him, and the sight of the Forests surrounding them beyond the gates. It was almost as if he could feel the souls within the bark taunting him and turning his heart to ice in his chest.

The hot tension in his eyes was treading _dangerously_ close to tears. He brought the fifth statue out and leant against it, breath heaving. He laid a fist on the chest of a human-sized statue, and pressed his head to it before he was able to gather the strength to go back inside.

“Keith—” Takashi tried, standing at the door as Keith trailed embers in his path. They popped on the ground, and the tile floor as he dragged one of the two guardian soldier statues framing the door. Takashi left inside the estate, and came out in time for Keith two whirl around for the last and final statue—only to find that his brother was already carrying it out.

Keith grabbed onto the arm of the sculpture, seething, trying to yank it out of Takashi’s arms. “I’m _helping you_!” Takashi shouted, heaving on it until the arm completely snapped from the statue. Keith staggered back, clutching it in his hands. Takashi stammered, floored in the walkway of Keith’s estate. He set the statue down among the others. They were all stationed there like garden pieces decorating the lawn, Takashi and Keith included.

“I—I’m sorry, Keith. I didn’t—” Takashi started as tears started to spill from Keith’s eyes.

He wrenched his teeth together, trying to push them back, knowing that he looked horrendous when he cried. It was a trait his father gave him—causing his blackened scleras to seep across his eye sockets and color his skin black instead of red. That was always the part that alarmed people on the few occasions he dared to cry. It wasn’t the tears, or the snot. It was the fact that even vulnerable, he still looked like the demon Zarkon was.

“He—has ruined— _everything!_ ” Keith screamed, holding the statue’s arm to his chest as he yelled, “I _lived here_ with Lance! If _I can’t fucking have Lance—_? What point do I have—living here— _without him?_ ”

Keith’s breath hitched, and he sucked it in and squeezed his eyes shut, and before he could scream at the top of his lungs, he was enveloped in his brother’s arms. Takashi held him close, like the last time their father blew up at Keith and ripped through Keith’s throat with his bare hands. Takashi’s hand lingered over Keith’s neck, and brushed over the numb blisters there. Everything about Takashi felt cold and freezing, and it seemed to stick to Keith’s sweltering flesh.

“I know I don’t act like I care most of the time.”

“All of the time,” Keith corrected.

“Okay. I don’t act like I care—but I _do_. And… I honestly didn’t think you loved Lance at all. And I figured Lance was just being rebellious and he needed to go back to his Homerealm just like you need to get back to the way things were before he showed up,” he explained, shrugging as he rubbed Keith’s back, trying to calm the rising anger boiling in the pit of Keith’s stomach. He felt sick with it. Like he swallowed hot coals and was letting them slowly burn holes through his abdomen. “I thought Father was just going to treat it like that. Like you were having a fling with some irresponsible minor god— _not_ as a means to start a war.”

“But none of this is my fault—I didn’t intend for this to happen. There’s no way I could have predicted this—” Takashi started rambling, and Keith forcefully removed himself from the embrace, cursing and muttering at his brother as Takashi tried to shed _all the goddamn blame_.

“Fuck you,” Keith snapped, and lashed out to slap him. His brother dodged it, and walked backwards away from Keith. The tears started to slip from his eyelashes, dripping from his cheeks as he shouted, “ _Fuck you!_ This is _your fault!_ You did this!”

A sharp fork of fire licked up the side of the sculpture’s arm. Takashi ran for the shade beneath one of the balconies. By the time Keith chucked the marble arm at him, his brother already disappeared through the shadows and was probably halfway to his sector by now.

  


  


“What the fuck happened to your shit-hole? I mean, it was a dumpster fire before, but now it’s just… more of a blazing ring of fire. You got a bus we could drive off a ramp through it?”

Keith leapt at the sound of Acxa approaching from behind. Figures. She wouldn’t use the portals to visit him, especially if she planned on sneaking her way in. She tended to like surprises more than he did, and this was one of those occasions. And sure, Acxa was fearless, but when faced with the _literal_ pit of fire Keith diminished his house to, there had to be… _some_ reservations about surprising him now.

“I’d prefer putting Takashi on a skewer and cooking him over it,” Keith confessed, pinching his fingers over the bridge of his nose. At least the tears were long gone, so he looked just as miserable as he did _before_ everything.

“You look normal,” she said. “And by ‘normal’ I mean you look like shit. What happened?”

Keith groaned, about to walk towards the estate gates, only to cause Acxa to flinch as if he was about to attack her. He rolled his eyes, and she huffed furiously. “Well, you can’t blame me! You look pissed, and _I_ don’t have plans on having my hair set on fire, so…”

“I am _not_ pissed.”

“You wanna tell that to the sinkhole where your house is, or should I?” she laughed, but her amusement screeched to a halt when she caught sight of Keith’s furious glare. She cleared her throat and said, “Well, I’ll just…”

“No—wait—”

“I just came to see Lance if I’m being honest,” she confessed with a laugh. “He’s _killer_ at giving advice, you know.”

“Lance isn’t here,” Keith confessed, and waited for Acxa’s expression to change, but it didn’t. She simply looked at the remains of Keith’s estate, and the statues in the lawn, and put two-and-two together. “Zarkon put him in Earthrealm. I need help finding him.”

At this, she blinked fast and shook her head. “He did _what?_ Wait, wait, wait, hold on. What’s Lance doing in _Earthrealm?_ ”

Keith crossed his arms and didn’t say a word. Sure, turning gods mortal wasn’t common, but neither of them would put it past Zarkon. In a matter of seconds, Acxa fit it all together and released a moan of distress that turned into a hollow laugh of disbelief.

“You _can’t_ be _serious_!” she cried out, throwing her arms down with a laugh. “Isn’t this just perfect! What’s Alfor got to say about it?”

“He doesn’t know. So you have to keep this between us,” he said, narrowing his eyes at her. “Don’t go telling Zethrid. You and I _both_ know she’ll blab about it the second she hears.”

Acxa crossed her sharp fingernail over her heart, just below her mural of tattoos, as if to say, “You have my word.”

She then looked at the pit of fire and frowned at it, pointing to it as she said, “Yeah, but you’ll have a hard time hiding things if anyone decides to pay you a visit. It’s like someone swept by and dropped a nuke on it. I mean, look at that _smoke_! You can’t really miss it! It’s like a goddamn signal fire! You really should have been more discrete.” She gestured wildly to the remnants of Keith’s estate that he couldn’t care less of at the moment.

“Would you want to hang on to my souls here?” he asked her, guiltily nodding to the statues in his lawn. “I feel bad leaving them out in the open.”

“Sure. I have room,” she said, smirking as Keith sighed in relief. “And also, they’re all swimming in your new ponds. In case you haven’t noticed. Lance sure did put up a fight, didn’t he? I wouldn’t put it past him. I also like the new decoration on your fencing over there…”

He looked to where the gates of his estate were, and where the spiked metal tops were. A guard was impaled and currently inactive on it. Acxa walked up to it and prodded at its limp hand before looking at Keith with a raised eyebrow.

Acxa was the only person he trusted with the news of Lance sojourning in the Underworld. On the days where Lance went stir crazy and wanted the company of someone _other_ than Keith, he called for Acxa, and the two of them would sit in the garden together while Keith observed from the balcony of one of the rooms watching them and straining to hear what they were laughing about. He never got past a few loud words before they hushed and kept to themselves.

He didn’t mind having Acxa around. Unlike _some_ people, he could actually tolerate her. Her sister Zethrid was much the same way, but loud, obnoxious, and the complete definition of chaotic evil. Keith went along with her shenanigans once in a while so long as they didn’t slide straight into his father’s spotlight on one of their tirades.

Acxa sighed, calling Keith back to where she was now strolling out the gates, saying, “Well… I dunno what to tell you. I take it you want me to tell you what you need to do?”

“You… sort of always have those answers, so yeah,” he confessed. “But please don’t suggest Pidge.”

“I was going to suggest Pidge.”

He groaned and whined, “You _know_ I can’t ask her!”

“What’s the big whoop? Just make a deal with the little demon—what’s more important, Lance, or your father? At this point I don’t think your father should expect anything short of you going to Pidge. Unless you want to have a decade-long chat with her mentor Coran.”

If Keith couldn’t stand Pidge, he _definitely_ couldn’t stand to waste a second around Mr. I’ll-Talk-Your-Ear-Off-Into-Oblivion. He didn’t have time to take the long route and go for Coran, who wouldn’t ask for payment. Pidge, on the other hand, wasn’t so traditional. She had quick answers because that was the way of her era, which also meant that she was prone to her business-like ways. She wouldn’t do anything without payment, and her payment was always… dicey.

He’d gone to her before and knew _exactly_ what she wanted in return. But now… he was almost too pissed at his father to care about the consequences.

“We don’t have time for Coran,” Acxa told him. “Who knows what sort of side effects Lance is going through. The chances that Lance is losing his memory of Homerealm are _incredibly_ high.”

“I know, I know—”

“If we go to Pidge, you’ll _have_ to accept whatever her terms are. She could find him in a day, maybe sooner. Coran would take at _least_ a week to find him, and on top of that, you’d have to listen to all of his gossip. And while _entertaining_ … takes up a lot of time that could be spent trying to bring Lance back.”

“It won’t be that simple,” he sighed, rubbing his hands over his eyes as they walked between the trees and down the treaded path he took more often than not. “Lance won’t even _remember_ me. My father wiped me from his memories, and the ticket to getting his godhood back is making him fall in love with me again. I honestly don’t know _what_ compelled Lance to stay with me aside from the fact that he hated where he was in Homerealm. Do you really expect _mortal_ Lance to fall in love with me?”

She hesitated and said, “Do… you want me to tell you the truth or…?”

“I don’t want you to tell me anything! Because I _know_ he won’t—I don’t need you to tell me what I already know,” he complained. “But I’ve thought about this since he showed up in the first place. I can’t imagine that any sane person would approach the Forests like that. So he must not be as normal as we make him out to be.”

“We can’t compare ourselves to him, Keith.”

“I know, but—”

“As much as I want to believe that Lance is just as twisted as those goddamn _roots_ and _branches_ … I really just think that the chances of him experiencing a flicker of rebelliousness is higher than him having been this way forever. And you know as well as I do that people don’t change, _especially_ gods.”

“As a minor god, though, do you _really_ think that applies to him?”

“Yes, I do. So I don’t want you to get your hopes up about whatever version of Lance we find in Earthrealm.”

Keith came to stand where Acxa pointed to one particular tree with its roots curling out of the rich black soil. The tendrils of it twisted up and curved around the contours of a woman’s face. Her jaw yawned open, producing a hole that would likely house an owl or a bird of some sort had this been Earthrealm. She was low on the tree, and would take centuries to fall from a branch and embark on whatever journey took her towards Takashi’s sector.

They were both silent as one of the caretakers walked by with branch clippings to burn. Keith could still remember when he was the sole caretaker of the Forest, and how his first ripened soul fell clumsily and startled him so terribly that his pale face looked just as much of a ghost as the man’s did breaking away from the bark concealing his eyes. Keith helped peel the cork from the man’s back and gave motion to his arms and legs that were clothed in brown wrappings.

_So souls aren’t so pure and white after all_ , Keith thought to himself as the nameless man thanked him and walked off in a trance.

Keith rubbed a hand over his eyes, considering the other souls he watched day after day drip towards the ground until they were dangling by the head from the branch’s bark. His caretakers were tasked with trimming the trees and helping acclimate new souls to the Underworld before they started the trek to Takashi’s sector. Lance enjoyed following them as far as the edge of the Forests, and managed to get several of them to talk before he had to stop at the farthest reaches of the roots curling from the damp soil.

“They can’t all be mindless, can they?” Lance asked him once, dangling upside down from a tree he climbed. He let his torso fall down in the same fashion as the soul that looked almost as though it was trying to cling to the branch by his knees.

“I don’t know about ‘mindless’,” Keith told him. “Takashi speaks to a lot of them in his sector. They start new lives there after their journey.”

“Journey where?” he asked.

“Souls are much like… plants. They have to be watered—the Well of Light—and taken care of, which is Takashi’s job. They go to the Well of Light and are given a new life when they drink from the Well.”

“Well of Light?”

“My… _other_ brother. It’s his connection to the Underworld. He’s the god of light and purpose. Determination.”

He recalled the way Lance hummed to himself, trying to remember whether or not Keith even _had_ a second brother. Before they could get too taken by the subject, Keith started to walk away, which prompted Lance to scramble and hop down from the branch. He chased after Keith, badgering him with more questions about the Well of Light and if he could see it.

“But you said _‘we’_. So you’re willing to help me get Lance back?” Keith said, interrupting his thoughts to address Acxa. He wondered if she could tell how much it hurt for him to swallow past the lump his heart left in his throat.

After lending Acxa a second to think, Keith looked up at her and watched her nod. “I’ll do what I can. Pidge likes me more than you, so… I can work something out with her. But you _know_ what she’s going to demand of you. Are you willing to risk it?” she asked.

“I am. I don’t give a fuck what my father’s got to say about it at this point,” he all but hissed, his determination rising as they shook on it before Acxa dissolved into a black mist, rising up on her way out of the Underworld to get him an audience with _Her Majesty_ Pidge.

  


  


It wasn’t every day Keith left his home in The Realm of the Dead. Pidge couldn’t flounce into the Underworld without causing a scene with Zarkon, so he was left to find his _own_ way to her realm with the help of Acxa. Pidge couldn’t walk through shadows and flit around in the night like he and Takashi could, but shadows didn’t exactly help Keith where he was going.

Acxa’s mists dropped them off on a platform that left them both temporarily blinded by the sharp, intense white light surrounding them. Acxa had come to the little demon’s realm more than once—in fact, Keith might say she frequented the place on her usual errands assisting the gods. They were both alike in those ways—same level of power, though Pidge was far more flamboyant with her’s.

He stumbled drunkenly off the platform, and staggered to a halt on Pidge’s sleek, spotless floors. He felt as though he was suddenly thrown into the spotlight, and wasn’t surprised that was _entirely_ the case. When he looked up in search of Pidge, he found her facing a digital image of the… fiery pit of hell he diminished his house to.

“Hm… I _do_ wonder what happened to your lovely little home…” The Beast hummed from her perfect little pedestal hovering over Keith and Acxa’s heads. “Acxa says a little disaster happened… But I imagine that you don’t need my help fixing your estate, hm.” She was all too amused by Keith’s annoyance on the topic, and continued to taunt him with a smirk.

Acxa side-eyed Keith, who ground his teeth together as he tried to ignore the fact that each second he spent listening to Pidge, he was probably looking more and more like his father.

“Well… as you know, Lance ran away from home for this-or-that reason,” Pidge went on, propping her head on her hand as she crossed her legs in her chair. “And it seems good ol' Zarkon Father-Dearest is royally pissed at you,” she mused aloud.

“Get on with it. As if you didn’t know the second it happened,” Keith all but spat, crossing his arms furiously over his chest.

Pidge looked startled, and Keith realized that _No, she probably doesn’t know_. “I’m just assuming Lance was there. But why would you be looking for someone in Earthrealm? I’m also assuming that this has to do with Lance…?”

“No need to assume,” Acxa said, clearing her throat. “Lance stayed with Keith for a while and his father blew a fuse when he found out about it. He zapped Lance mortal and now he’s in the body of his human counterpart.”

“Impressive,” Pidge hummed, and Keith groaned. “Can it, wiseass. I hope you know that this is all your fucking fault. I've met Lance before—one other time. He was always nice to me when he wasn’t stealing my equipment.”

“He likes shiny things…” Keith muttered under his breath, and Acxa added, “Must be his fish genes.”

“Slippery little thing, isn’t he? This is just _perfect_!” Pidge cried out, her previous shock dissolving into a giddy smile. She clasped her hands together, absolutely _vibrating_ with excitement. “Who knew _you_ , Keith-fucking-Kogane, would start _drama!_ This is incredible! This is the best goddamn day of my life!” she hollered, throwing her hands up and hooting up into the infinite expanse of her glowing screens that dissolved into layers upon layers of more hologram walls.

“But in all seriousness—Alfor is going to bust a nut over this. Literally. Lance is, like, his favorite star-child. He’ll never have kids again if he can’t get Lance back. He won’t settle for a mortal version of him.”

“If Alfor’s nut busts over this, I’d expect that to just make more evil replicas of Lance,” Acxa said, and as Pidge cackled, chair rising up, Keith’s jaw dropped at his friend. She shrugged, smirking regardless of the echo of Pidge’s demonic laughter lifting throughout the realm. “Who knows. Maybe Alfor’s next kid will be an exact replica of Lance.”

“This isn’t up for debate. We have to do everything to prevent Alfor from busting a nut over this. So he can’t know—” Keith started, interrupted by Pidge falling several stories down to stop in front of him, all seriousness returned.

“And how do you plan on keeping mortal Lance from Alfor,” she demanded. “That’s gonna be kind of hard to cover up once you find him.”

“My father will give his godhood back if I find Lance.”

“Seriously? That’s it?” she asked.

Keith went on before Acxa could say otherwise. “Yeah, so are you going to help me prevent a war or what? I don’t exactly have plans on dying any time soon,” Keith confessed, glaring into her evil, satanic eyes that glinted white like the light from her computer screens.

She studied Keith, pursing her lips into a tight, slim line of total superiority. They both knew she would be the only one capable of helping him find Lance any time soon. She was also entirely capable of destroying him by running straight to Alfor and informing him of every goddamn reason why it was impossible for him to find Lance all this time. For all Keith knew, she was already halfway there. Her mentor Coran was insane to teach her the tricks of cloning herself for the purpose of _business only_. It wasn’t exactly like Alfor had eyes in the Underworld anyway—he wasn’t allowed to. It was one of the arrangements Zarkon and the other dips hits made when they were divvying up territories. They each got their own realm—Sections of Existence, as Keith liked to call them—so there was no reason for them to interfere with one another. If they didn’t have to live together, they wouldn’t have to see each other unless entirely necessary.

“Keith,” Pidge said, reaching out to him. He flinched as she grabbed him by the shoulders and gave him a shake. “I just want you to know, as a mortal enemy, that you have _seriously_ fucked up. And I am willing to help you under the condition that you are now indebted to me.”

She lowered a hand and held it out to him, waiting for him to accept the terms. He could feel Acxa’s eyes on him, and dared to look at her. Even if Acxa and Pidge were on good terms, it didn’t mean Acxa approved of anything Pidge did. The demon probably screwed Acxa over more than once in the millennia they’ve been alive. They hated the terms—he hated the terms for every fucking deal he made with the devil.

It was the reason he found himself shaking Pidge’s hand, and sighing, “I’m going to regret this.”

Pidge let out a loud laugh before clasping him around the shoulders. “That’s _exactly_ what I want to hear, buddy!”


	3. the hunt

Acxa stood near where Pidge landed and faced the limitless scroll of radiant screens that nearly blinded Keith’s sensitive eyes. The edges of their figures were obscured and blurred by a halo of white, turning them into complete silhouettes as Pidge said, “Well, I suppose we can start by following the signature of his parents.”

“Is that possible? Turning him mortal would erase all that, wouldn’t it?” Acxa asked, and Pidge shook her head, intriguing Keith instantly.

“He’ll be more or less a demigod without his full godhood. There’s no way to _completely_ stamp out the presence of pure godhood in anyone’s blood, unless you shred them through a Source of some kind, but I wouldn’t know where to find such a thing,” she confessed, fingers swiping through the air and sorting between all the worlds of words and numbers storming around them. They flew forward in inky black figures, curling like smoke between them all.

Keith came to stand at Pidge’s other side to avoid all the ruckus. “Well, I mean, the Big Guy could probably deal with total destruction of godhood, but Zarkon couldn’t even fathom it.”

“So… that’s good.”

“Yes, that’s _really_ good. Our mortal counterparts don’t have a speck of it. They’re just another dormant human, _but_ … because Lance is there, not completely a god, his mortal counterpart can tolerate his level of power. _So,_ there will likely just be one spark of it that we can peg down into a specific timeline,” she explained.

Keith nodded uneasily, because it wasn’t every day he had to deal with a counterpart. Every god likely had one, but for the most part, it was an anomaly that they ever had to _deal_ with them. They were simply dormant human lifelines scattered across all variations of time and space. His father never fully explained the extent of their importance, aside from… situations such as these. Dropping down into Earthrealm made them useful, because they had perfect doppelgängers to blame events on that just naturally took the blame. They were also the reason why some gods refused to visit Earthrealm. In fear of ruining a counterpart’s life—so, for the most part, they were… humbling.

“What century would Zarkon be most likely to drop Lance…” Pidge mused aloud.

His answer was automatic. “Probably the Stone Age in hopes of Lance being eaten by an animal of some kind so the blame couldn’t necessarily be put on him, aside from putting Lance there.”

“It’s a good start… but I don’t see him in the timelines… Stop standing there, you two are making me nervous. Go… watch those screens over there and look for a blue dot,” she chastised, urgently shaking her finger across the room so Keith and Acxa could busy themselves while she worked.

Keith’s mind was busy with thoughts of Lance when Acxa asked, “What do you think your century is?”

“I feel like if Pidge’s century is in the future, I’d probably be somewhere around the start of the internet,” Keith confessed. “I’d like a damn good camera, too, so it’d have to be around that time.”

Pidge snorted from behind them. “Like, a large format camera? So you could have a fifty foot banner of Lance’s mass hung up around your nonexistent living room?”

“Precisely,” he deadpanned.

“I dunno. I feel like you’d end up in a yearbook during that time and be nominated for ‘Most Likely To Be The Anti-Christ,’” she confessed, gesturing to the title with her hands, arcing it over her shit-eating grin. Acxa snorted and ignored the way Keith scowled at them both, which only prompted Pidge to clap her hands together and shout, “There it is! You almost got it down!”

“C’mon, I’ve already told you—he’s a _boxer_ , and you know it. And, like, in another life I’d rather not dwell on he was a king or something I don’t really know.”

“I’d like to spend some time in _that_ life of your’s,” Pidge mused. “King status. Better than a fucking princess I’ll tell ya that much. Or, you know… war criminal, thief, I dabbled in the magical realms here and there but you see what I mean? You were a _king_ , talk about _power_ in mortal standards!”

 _Wasn’t really_ me _with the power, though,_ he mused to himself, considering the fact that no one was ever in control when the Big Guys were breathing down their necks. Keith’s everyday life circled around the tasks his father assigned, and even in his mortal counterparts, it was like other people were always telling him what to do. He always had to depend on _someone_ for his power. He always got his power from _somewhere_.

It didn’t take as long as Keith expected for Pidge to spot the first signature of Lance, but either way he felt like he waited an entire mortal lifetime for it. Acxa and Keith where lying on the ground together, amid the torrent of information funneling around Pidge until a sharp spark cut through it. The spark was like lightning, fast, and Keith never would have thought anything of it until Pidge shrieked.

“We got him!” she shouted, secluding the strip and yanking it out of the infinite, nearly opaque net of timelines.

Acxa lunged up, grabbing Keith with her as Pidge lowered to the ground and swept out the era in a neat, circular timeline. The blue condensed, focusing, branching out, shimmering like the electricity under Pidge’s fingertips. The limitless possibilities Lance chose from the moment he became mortal.

The blue strip continued backwards, but never forward—Lance in this very, present moment with every record of his previous choices marked behind him, even before Zarkon threw him down to Earthrealm.

Pidge stripped the line, and Acxa yelped, reacting almost as though she just tore the spine from a fish. Pidge swung it up, flinging the dull bit of Lance’s timeline onto the screen in front of her. She dialed it in, and a series of stats came into focus. A map.

Keith leaned in to read and said, “Wow. He couldn’t have picked a more populated century?” Keith deadpanned as the population counter went up, and up, and up… until his heart ached just looking at it. Lance was hidden somewhere in there, discretely concealed away from their eyes among all the mortals swarming around the Earth’s surface.

“Well, I don’t know about _most_ populated, but the year 2060 is a bit of a literal fuckup. It’s like a world-wide case of ‘how many Sims can we fit into one house’ when they _finally_ get rid of the Sim limit,” Pidge droned, slapping a hand onto her hoverseat as she shook her head in annoyance. She looked up behind her, and noted that Acxa had her eyebrow raised. She held her hands out in surrender, saying, “What? I have hobbies!”

“Yeah, terribly _dated_ hobbies. What happened to your new sci-fi trend, huh? Tech god not working for you?” he jested, pacing over to the end of her table. The wall of endless screens circled around them, prompted only by Pidge’s hands sorting through them with expert speed. She barely wasted a breath on a single glance to each informant of her’s.

“Yeah, well, at least Zarkon picked a century full of social media. Haven’t quite hit that downfall yet,” she mused aloud, drawing forward profiles and names all starting with ‘Lance’. Faces went up in a cloud of colors, startling Keith with their vibrancy. “What do you think his mortal counterpart’s last name is in this century?”

“Fuck if I know. Probably something generic. Like ‘Jones’,” Keith said.

“Good to know you think he’s ‘generic’,” Acxa scoffed, and at Keith’s skeptical glare, she said, “What, are you gonna stop me from telling him?” Pidge cackled from behind them, and Keith figured Pidge was never one to keep shit to herself, and Acxa was too close to Lance to bother holding back. In Pidge’s infancy, she was a messenger god, and later on as she flew through the ranks involving weather and air, she picked up on mastering electricity along the way. That was her track record—constantly evolving. And now, she seemed to have found her niche in “the future,” according to most gods.

Keith rolled his eyes, folding his arms as he crossed his arms and let his eyes sort through the images of men who looked like Lance with the same name. She set it to filter itself, muttering, “Seven billion motherfucks… what has Alfor done.”

“I wouldn’t blame _all_ of them on Alfor. Maybe, like, two percent.”

“That’s still over a hundred million,” Acxa said.

“That sounds accurate to me,” he hummed with a sly grin.

Pidge snorted, swinging her chair around and sliding across the table to him on a pivot. “See, _this_ is why we’d make a good team. Takashi doesn’t have your sense of humor.”

“Yeah, well, that’s because Zarkon dunked him in bleach, dusted him off, and sat Takashi on a mantel,” he confessed with a sigh. “That’s what happens when he just _tolerates_ someone without dusting them off. I collected all his… sardonic tendencies.”

“His cynicism.”

“Yes, that as well,” Keith sighed, pushing his hands over his face with a groan, and hissed out, teeth clenching painfully, “It’s why I’m not even all that surprised that this happened. I’m too much like him. This is… almost _exactly_ what I would have done in his situation. Rationally I know I’m a fucking idiot.”

“Rationally, _everyone_ is an idiot,” she said. “But we’re _gods_ , We _don’t_ fuck up. You aren’t a fuck up, Keith. Zarkon just likes to make his inferiors feel like they are… well, for lack of a better word, _inferiors_. And you may not be on his level of godhood purity, but… you’ve got the makings for it. You _could_ be at his status one day.”

“You make it sound like he’s just _waiting for the day_ his secondary role in the Broadway Shit Show takes his place as the star,” Acxa said, waving her hands in the air. Keith looked away from them both so they wouldn’t see how black his scleras were, or how much his eyes burned thinking about it. Maybe that was why Zarkon kept Takashi so close. Takashi was _far_ more capable than Keith when it came to taking their father’s place. _If only he had the goddamn balls to do it._

But neither of them were quite ready for that responsibility. They had their own work to do in the meantime.

Pidge didn't respond, because in some ways, they all knew it was true. It was the case for any major god—Alfor included. While Lance was a minor god, his eldest sister was two-parts pure. She had the potential, but like Takashi, she was too obedient to dare harm a hair on her precious father’s head.

Keith didn’t often think about Alfor’s eldest daughter because he normally conditioned himself _not_ to. There was too much to be said about that one, especially with the deal Alfor and Zarkon made between Takashi and Allura—

Acxa cursed before Keith could tell the reason why. Pidge turned in her hover chair, flinching at the sound of her voice coming from beyond the screens, shouting, “—I wouldn’t go in there—! Well, okay, can’t really stop you.”

Keith bristled, the heat rising in the hollow sockets of his eyes. Pidge hardly moved from where she face-palmed on her hover chair, but maybe that was because her _multitasking_ ended in a _clone_ sent to retrieve the _Queen herself_.

Keith turned around and instantly ducked back to avoid a slap to the face.

Allura was always quick and silent, and never ceased to be deadly. Her cloud of white hair shifted with the sharp movement, like it was submerged in water, or floating in space. Her hauntingly pure white elegance couldn’t mask the look of absolute rage on her face.

Acxa cut between them, biting out, “Allura, how nice to see you.” Allura tried to dodge her, only to grab Acxa by the lapels of her jacket instead. “Seems like you’re in a _mood_.”

“Can it, Ice Queen,” Allura seethed, jabbing a finger in Keith’s direction. “I’m going to _kick_ your sorry _ass_ for this,” she snarled at him, the air crackling around them. A spark went through one of the screens, causing the images to sputter and converge again.

“ _Really?_ Are you now?” Keith said, and he knew Acxa was completely ready to slap him for taunting Allura.

“There’s a _reason_ I don’t invite you here,” Pidge whined from her pedestal, pegging Allura with a glare. “I see you’ve tormented another one of my clones.”

“I don’t let people torment me,” her clone said.

“So maybe I did a little,” Allura huffed, sticking her nose in the air as she pushed Acxa away, folding her arms over her chest. Both Pidges rolled their eyes before the clone pixelated and flitted off to merge with the other screens. “You’ve _got_ to work on your separation a little more. It was so easy to tap in to whatever conversation you were having with the _devil_ over here.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Keith hissed, expecting the way she all but lunged at him.

“Not my fault you thought of me at the perfect moment,” she all but seethed against their shared breath. “I knew your brother couldn’t keep me off his mind, but I thought you knew better than that. Speaking of brothers, I’d _love_ to hear more about where he was! No wonder you haven’t thought my name in over a eyar, hm? Guess all that drama with Takashi taught you to keep your thoughts to yourself.” Her sharp, shark-like teeth filed into a grin.

“It’s not my fault Lance stuck around as long as he did,” Keith snapped, aware that Acxa was still trying desperately to cut between them again.

Centuries without war or reason to fight was _seriously_ detrimental to his reflexes. When Allura screamed and threw herself on him, he definitely wasn’t prepared for the shock that resonated through him, and sent a splash of water up from the ground as she shoved him into it.

A current of water erupted from the tunnel of screens, shattering the screens as Allura shoved him through her water portal and out the other end, falling through the air until Acxa scrambled to catch him in a pocket of mist. He only hovered for a moment before Allura crashed through the water portal feet first. He caught her by the ankle and swung her down, the force of it shattering Acxa’s illusion and sending him opposite Allura. Water rained down, rising inches above the floor where Keith crash-landed and lifted himself out of Pidge’s new pond.

“For gods’ sakes,” Pidge huffed. “I seriously didn’t need water damage on my list of things to take care of.”

“I’m sure _consorting with the enemy_ wasn’t on there, either. But look at who you invited in,” Allura shouted at her, her mermaid fangs baring at Keith, who squeezed out water from his cape and let it hang suspended in the air like it always did—a second shadow. “ _You_ did this to Lance! He’s mortal—because of _you!_ ” she screamed.

“Oh fuck you, you soggy _cunt!_ ” he spat, and wasn’t even surprised when Pidge sent a shock through the water because of it. It prevented Allura from tackling him again, but it certainly didn’t stop her from tearing away the floor underneath Keith. He leapt to avoid yet another water portal, all but stomping his feet as he glared at her from across the makeshift arena.

“Can you stop trying to take your anger out on Keith? Just for _one minute_ , please?” Acxa insisted. Keith looked to her, and then to Allura, who seemed hesitant to listen to a goddess she barely knew. It probably didn’t help that Acxa was a known friend of Keith’s—it probably ruined any chance Allura had of taking Acxa seriously. “Keith’s going to make Lance a god again, which is why we came to Pidge.”

“And why should I trust that this is your _actual_ plan, hm?” she hissed, her biting remark cutting into Keith’s confidence, or whatever was left of it. “I never trusted _any_ of you in the first place! As if you care about Lance at all! You’ve tainted him—you’ve _ruined_ him—! If anything he’s better mortal if it means he’s not with you in the Underworld.”

“Better _mortal_?” he countered, holding her gaze, and her flashing blue eyes that never wavered. “Do I seriously have to remind you of the monsters out there?”

“And isn’t that all thanks to your precious _father_ ,” she seethed, and her words did wonders at turning his eyes pure black and red, sending his cloak rippling with energy.

Just as he was about to growl out something expletive, Pidge let out a shout that echoed with the tides of the water radiating around Allura’s ankles. “I found him!” Pidge shouted.

Allura’s mane of white hair continued to float, eyes studying Keith as the rest of her remained motionless before sharply turning on her heels. “No— _Allura!_ Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Keith spat out. Acxa caught the hint, and threw a barrier up around Allura, stopping her from getting to Pidge first.

They sloshed through the water, and Keith flipped Allura off, who slammed her fist on Acxa’s foggy glass barrier and shouted silent curses at him.

“I found his medical records. He’s currently in a hospital—he has a friend who’s been updating family members on social media—yada yada yada… Oh! And seems like he suffered serious head trauma during the switch, so he’s fragile at the moment. Was in a coma for these past two weeks in Earthrealm time,” Pidge explained over the sound of Allura slamming her hands on the glass. Acxa shared a look with Keith as his stomach twisted into a knot.

Pidge swept the medical documents back and pulled up a map as Keith laid both of his hands over his face. He knew that mortal pain wasn’t anything like what they experienced in their normal bodies. His negligence led to Lance’s unnecessary suffering and now? Now he was in the body of a weak mortal because of _him_ …

He had to bring Lance back.

“Shit,” Acxa said, tapping Keith on the shoulder and pointing behind them. Her barrier was empty aside from the ripples of water pushing up against the glass, pulsing from where Allura ducked into a water portal and disappeared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can fight me on Tumblr [here!](http://girlskylark.tumblr.com/) :D


	4. welcome home

Lance couldn’t remember the last time he ever felt so _awful_ before in his life. He had to admit, he lived a rather sheltered life with his family in his Homerealm—where the ocean met the sky and everything was calm and blue and so _homely_. He missed the warmth of waking up with his siblings, stretching his arms out, and being greeted by his sister’s, “Did you sleep well?” from nearby. She was always up before him, hair perfect and eyes crystalline.

Her suitor was a lucky guy. Lance really should be happy for him, if he wasn’t currently suffering from a _splitting_ headache.

He grimaced the second he tried to raise his arms and failed to do so. He groaned uncomfortably, shifting on the bed as the pressure on his skull only increased. “Ouchie,” he whined, pouting as he tried to sit up and force the blood to rush elsewhere—preferably his arms and legs where they felt numb.

There was something familiar and stark about this place he woke up in, and it took a moment for his tight, painful eyes to adjust to. The plain room consisted of simple white walls, white sheets, white curtains, and an _awful_ white gown speckled with… were those _flowers?_ They didn’t even _look_ like flowers—!

“Lance?” an unfamiliar voice spoke up from across the room, and the pain in Lance’s head felt so _real_ that his brain swam with cloudy, unfamiliar thoughts. This… was a hospital. He was in the hospital—he must have hurt his head terribly to be here. The ocean was just a dream—a _lovely_ dream that he wished to go back to immediately.

“Um…” he started, looking around and not recognizing anything beyond the blue tiled floors and boring walls. Eventually, he caught sight of the dark-skinned man rising from the seat beside him fast enough to stumble on his way to the button on the wall.

The man was intimidatingly large—there was something about his structure that told Lance not to mess with him. Someone that size could _seriously_ leave behind damage. Like the sort of damage that would land Lance… in a hospital. Before he could even ask for the man’s name, his companion hurried to the bed, smiling wide as he placed his squarish hands over the hospital bed railing.

“H-How do you feel? Do you need anything right now?” he asked, eager, eyes warm with excitement.

Lance stared at him in surprise. Sure, the enthusiasm wasn’t entirely offbeat to what Lance remembered life being like, but… they were in a _hospital_. Why did that word sound so foreign? “Um… I—” Lance’s voice came out scratchy, and he squeaked in surprise, hand going up to his throat as he tried to push himself up again unsuccessfully.

The man held onto a button, and Lance gripped onto the railing as his torso raised up slowly, accompanied by the hum of the mechanical bed. He was shocked to find the man laughing at his response. “Geez, you’d think you’ve never been in a hospital bed before. Last time you got your tonsils out, I think. Right? You spent the night in the hospital.”

Lance stared at his retreating back, his pulse racing in his chest. He remembered movies with heart rate monitors, and though there wasn’t one in front of him, he could feel his nonetheless. It was agony against the inside of his skull, hammering against the bone of his ribcage. He kept his fingers over his throat, trying hard to swallow until the man came over with a cup of water from the sink and helped Lance down it all. Now wasn’t exactly the time to worry about being poisoned, especially when he was _already hospitalized_ with a throbbing skull.

There were wires attached his wrists and a clip hooked onto his finger. It seemed bulky when he held onto such a dainty paper cup printed with flowers on it.

There came a knock on the door, and a nurse walked in accompanied by a woman wearing a white coat and a name tag Lance couldn’t bother remembering. She came up to the bedside and leaned gently towards Lance. “Seems like you woke up fine. Your friend Hunk here has been waiting all day for you.”

 _Hunk?_ Lance tried to repeat the name, glancing at his companion—Hunk—who offered a friendly smile in return.

“We’ll have to perform a customary checkup, to ensure that everything is running smoothly. Have you noticed anything strange when he woke up, Hunk? You _are_ our witness,” the doctor said with a cheeky smile. She and the nurse started to remove the wires and chords attached to Lance’s arm. He couldn’t seem to stop staring at them, even when the extracted full needles.

Hunk laughed a little and gave a shrug. “Not that I noticed. His throat seems sore though—hasn’t talked once.”

“That’s normal, seeing as we’ve been feeding you through a tube the past two weeks,” the doctor commented, glancing up at Lance’s wide eyes. “What do you remember? It’s good to test your vocal chords a little. We could start with your name.”

Lance cleared his throat a little, glancing around at all of them before stammering out, “My… name is Lance.”

“That’s good. What year is it?”

Lance floundered at the question, his panic mounting in an instant. He was thankful the clip was off his finger then, otherwise the quiet monitor attached to the wall would have spiked. “I—I don’t know. I don’t… remember much of a-anything.”

He looked up worriedly at Hunk and the doctor. Much to his relief, the doctor didn’t seem all that surprised, and Hunk seemed to simply, sigh—as if he _expected_ it, though wished it hadn’t happened. “You… remember me at least, right?” he asked, eyes down on the blanket as he waited for Lance’s response.

Lance shook his head, offering a shrug as he looked to the doctor. She had her head turned away, towards the nurse, before she said, “We’ll have to do a neurological exam, to see the extent of your memory loss. Don’t be too alarmed—we may have to order an MRI scan to check for any damage or abnormalities we may have missed when you first came to us.”

His eyes strayed to Hunk. Somehow he knew what an MRI was, but the word was almost as foreign as “hospital.” It unnerved him, thinking about it too much. What about those words seemed unnatural to him? Still, an MRI scan didn’t seem quite as dangerous as Hunk’s pale face said it was.

“Um… could I maybe talk to Lance for a bit? Maybe jog his memory?” Hunk suggested. “That might work, right?”

“I’m afraid not, and for the sake of Lance’s comfort, it’d be best for one of our staff to stick with the two of you.” Internally, Lance chanted, _Yes, thank you!_ but it didn’t stop him from feeling guilty at the dejected look continuing to print itself across Hunk’s features.

The doctor left momentarily, and took Hunk with her to speak with. It wasn’t until Lance was left with the nurse that he realized why Hunk had to go—he had a tube pulled out of his dick. The nurse explained that because Lance was encouraged to wake up that day, they already took care of his feeding tube. By that point, she called Hunk back in since they would just be doing a general checkup for Lance that involved balance, weight, reflexes, et cetera. As she helped him off the bed and across the room in a gentle walk, Hunk asked, “So do you know where you are? I mean, other than a hospital?”

“No, not really. I know I’ve always liked Hawaii though,” he confessed, smiling at the thought of sand between his toes… a margarita by the ocean…

“Yeah, you always did want to go to Hawaii…” Hunk murmured, rubbing a hand underneath his chin. “But we’re in British Columbia. There’s a lot of mountains and stuff, and the coasts are really pretty.”

“ _Ooh_ , British Columbia. I like British Columbia, too,” Lance said. “I love visiting.”

“Well, you _did_ used to live in Illinois, and you had friends here, so… you visited a few times I guess.”

“Am I visiting now?”

“No, you live here. With me. We have an apartment—albeit, a kinda crappy one—kinda close to the ocean,” he confessed, and Lance spun around so fast the nurse had to steady him to keep from falling. Hunk seemed just as surprised by the action.

Lance gasped out, “You’re kidding. We get to _see_ the _ocean?_ ”

“Well—”

“Take me there,” he demanded, bracing himself on the floor as if preparing to fight someone for it. Instead, the nurse giggled a little and told him to calm down—she had to check his reflexes before he went _anywhere_.

He practiced balancing from foot to foot and passed with flying colors, much to the nurse’s surprise. Hunk stood alongside him for those and imitated Lance’s movements—if anything, _Hunk_ was the one with terrible balance. They made it into a competition of sorts that ended in laughter, and another splitting headache for Lance. The nurse had him drink more water.

“Everything’s the same since you left. I’ll take you back when they discharge you—maybe going home will help your memory,” Hunk suggested, and his promise warmed the part of Lance’s heart that felt hollow and unfamiliar.

Hunk was asked to leave the room so the doctor could finish the checkup, and they could check Lance’s general knowledge of things. Some of the answers popped up without any prompting, or without any origin. There was just some part of Lance that knew certain things about the time period that he couldn’t explain—like how he knew the states, the countries the doctor pointed to, the names of the oceans… there was something so constant about their structure that Lance’s brain held on to. It meant he recognized the names of the first several presidents of the United States, along with Prime Ministers, the Queen, the first president of the Republic of China… just ordinary things.

He was scheduled to stay another night, and Hunk’s already worried face just seemed to progress into barely-restrained panic. The doctor reassured him that Lance would be fine—and that they had an MRI scan prepared for the morning. When they left the two of them be, Hunk dropped onto his chair and combed his hands through his hair.

“You look worried. Are MRI scans scary?” Lance asked, drinking from the straw of an orange juice box.

Hunk laughed nervously, leaning forward to rest his arms on the bed railing. “I don’t know. I’ve never had one. I just… know they’re expensive. And you staying another night isn’t going to help,” Hunk explained, picking at the chipped paint of the railing. “I’m not sure if it’s obvious, but… we aren’t the richest people, Lance. I’m sure you were hoping to wake up and find out you’re rich and famous, huh?”

“I don’t know about that,” Lance giggled. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“I know—but I’m worried about _you_ having to pay for it. Your family in Chicago has one of those fundraiser pages going, and… it scares me. But I shouldn’t be making you worry about it. I’ll tell you all about your financial stuff later,” he sighed, glancing towards the blinding light of the window. Lance followed his gaze, and considered what Hunk was talking about. _Finances?_ What a bizarre concept. That seemed unfamiliar as well.

Hunk wanted to stay the night with Lance, but under both Lance’s and the doctor’s insistence, Hunk went home to get a full night’s rest for the following day. It would be an eventful day for the both of them.

Lance tried to sleep, and was surprised by how… _exhausted_ he felt. What was this weight pushing against his eyelids? or the numb medication pulling on his limbs? He leant his head back and sighed, staring at the dull white ceiling, with the blinking smoke detector in the far corner, near the curtain that covered the door. At some point, he fell asleep, but it was so lonely in there. He wished it wasn’t just him in this dingy, depressing hospital room. He wished Hunk was there, or maybe his sister…

  


. . .

  


“We didn’t find any abnormalities in his scan, and we don’t expect there to be any long term complications aside from his memory loss. I don’t want to get your hopes up by saying that everything will return eventually—Lance will clearly struggle with remembering past events and relationships for the time being, but… only time will tell if it will all return. Be patient with him, Hunk.”

Lance was discharged from the hospital later that day. They stopped by the desk outside in the lobby to say goodbye and thank you to the nurses who helped that past fortnight. Hunk kept his arm linked with Lance’s to keep him steady as they wandered out through the motion-sensor doors, and out into the humid air. As Lance carefully stepped off the sidewalk and into the parking lot, he said, “I want to do something nice for them. Like… bake cookies for them. But I don’t know how to bake.”

“Good thing for you, because my Ma _loves_ making cookies,” Hunk reassured him.

“Would she make us cookies?”

“We already have a whole tin full at home,” he confessed with a laugh. “And a _lot_ of Get-Well-Soon balloons. It’s probably reassuring to know that a lot of people like you, Lance.”

Lance continued to smile as Hunk helped him into the car, and stuffed an informational packet into the glovebox along with Lance’s pain medication. He went on smiling as Hunk settled into the driver’s seat and said, “And Finny really misses you. They’ll be thrilled that you’re back.”

Lance blinked for a moment and laughed, saying, “ _Finny?_ Who’s that?”

Hunk gasped, placing a hand over his heart as he exclaimed, “ _Finnegan Skybarker_ is not only the light of our lives, but they’re also the only dog on this planet I would take a bullet for. Not that I _wouldn’t_ take a bullet for a dog, but… Finny’s just our special guy, you know?”

Lance giggled, and just as he was about to ask questions, Hunk charged onwards as he pulled out of their parking spot and out onto the road. “I can’t really lie to you about Finny, no matter how much we fight over our child, but… You always insist that Finn is a Sky and _I_ always say that they’re a Finn.”

“Why ‘they’?” Lance asked, grinning so hard it hurt.

“Well, we got Finny neutered a few years back when we got them, and they’re entirely gender fluid and pansexual. Finn only goes after the most worthy of the dogs at the dog park, you see what I mean?”

“Yeah, kind of. I already love them,” he confessed, and shared a giddy smile with Hunk before they lapsed into silence aside from the usual. Hunk turned the radio on, and as some light acoustics filled the car, they blended with the wind howling through the windows.

The sky was a gentle white overcast, with a breeze that pushed through the open window, and blanketed over Lance with its salty texture, and humid edges. His head tipped to the side, and he found himself staring at the hula girl on the dash, and then Hunk’s profile as they drove onwards.

They came to calmer roads—roads dusted over white pale white sand—and Hunk closed the windows a tad to say, “The doctor said you were one of her best post-coma patients.”

“Really? That’s nice of her,” Lance mused aloud. “Why’s that?”

“Because you practically woke straight up like you were sleeping. Granted, you were disoriented, but most of the time it takes several days for the person to have full motor function back,” Hunk explained. “But that’s why I’ll help you around the house. We don’t want you falling and bonking your head again.”

“What _did_ happen? How did I hit my head?” Lance asked, reaching up to prod at where the stitches must have been. The skin was raw and new—a patch of his hair only now starting to grow back.

“I… think _maybe_ that’s a story for another time? I don’t want you to get the wrong impression about who you were,” he explained, and as Lance frowned at him, eyes tracing the grimace of his lips, he continued, “But I guess you’re wondering about what you were all about before this, huh? You had a job—well, _have_ a job, because they still have you on payroll and they’re just waiting for you to get better. They all love you there. You’re one of their best tour guides.”

“Tour… guides?” _Haven’t heard that before_ , he confessed to himself, brow furrowing. Hunk giggled, though, and didn’t seem to find his ignorance bizarre.

“Yeah! We both sort of work together but not at all. Well—let me explain. We work at a ski resort and in the summer there’s a lot of hikers that come up and you work at that facility. I work for my parents at the marina.”

“But… it’s a ski resort…”

“We’re close to the ocean. Sort of. We live on the Sound and the resort is _way_ off in the mountains. No one _lives_ in the resort, so all the workers stay in the town my parents’ marina’s in. We get tourists there too ‘cause of all the hotels and stuff.”

“Huh. Interesting…” Lance hummed, thinking about what the Sound must look like in the mountains. He didn’t have to think about it for too long, considering they were emerging from the valley that cut from the hospital to the town he and Hunk lived in.

The road turned onto the edge of the cliff ducking down into the water, and the boulders sending up fans of water droplets. Lance pressed towards the window to see it all, and giggled when Hunk put the window back down, which sent the wind billowing through Lance’s hair. He squinted past the warmth and the faint hint of rain in the air. It settled like a gentle sheet on his skin, and dampened his hair into a compliant mess. He combed it back and looked excitedly back at Hunk, who looked at the scenery as though he saw it plenty of times before.

The sea was enclosed between the mountains, and the islands that lifted up from the water like massive, unmoving boulders that caught the waves in the roots of the evergreen trees climbing up the sides. With the overcast, the mountains were shrouded in clouds like fog, and it washed white over the dark rock and trees in the distance. The view flickered between trees growing out the side of the cliff before it reappeared around the bend, and brought them to the sight of a town level with the sea, tucked away in a pocket within the mountains. The road continued alongside it, and Lance marveled at the houses rising up into the hilly valley.

Hunk laughed a little over the wind and said, “When you first moved here you looked exactly like that!”

“What? _Amazed?_ This is _incredible_!” Lance cried out, and went as far as to holler into the wind as the car turned down the winding, switchback road to the streets of cute houses.

The houses were on the verge of college-style—cute, but not quite kept up to par. Despite their chipped paint and uncut grass, Lance was falling in love. His heart nearly burst from his chest when the car slowed, and he thought, _This is it. This is where I live_. It was a small place—nothing extravagant—and it featured dusty white shutters and window frames over the top of some deep, old blue paint that gave Lance yet another inkling of his time in the sea—

“My parents are all flustered over you being in the hospital. I think they’re stopping by tonight to check up on you,” Hunk said, before he pushed open his door and stepped out. Lance fumbled with the car door before shoving it open, his hand crossing paths with the one Hunk reached out to him.

They clasped on to one another, and Hunk heaved Lance out onto his feet. He stepped into the grass of their short lawn that reached only about three feet before dropping off onto the sidewalk below. The drop-off was lined with rocks pressed into the dirt, and there was grass growing between them. Lance helped Hunk carry the packets of information the doctor gave them, and together they walked up the steps of the porch and towards the front door.

Something rammed into the door from the other side, and started scratching repeatedly at it. Lance jumped, startled, and looked to where Hunk rolled his eyes and sighed, “That’s just Finn. They get a little excited when we come home. They’re harmless though. Don’t worry about them jumping on you.”

“Oh. Okay,” Lance said, and waited as Hunk unlocked the door as the dog on the other side continued to scratch and scratch and—

The door opened and a bubbling ball of fur came spiraling out and against the porch railing. Lance squeaked, and giggled as the dog rammed into his shins in a vibrating mess of energy. Sky only came up to his knees, with fur so fluffy and smooth that Lance reveled in the pup’s affection towards him. He bent down and accepted a layer of kisses Sky laid across his chin, crystalline blue eyes nearly white with a dark rim around them. Hunk helped tug them back from tackling Lance to the ground, but he wouldn’t have minded it one bit.

“So this is… Sky?” Lance said, raising an eyebrow at Hunk, who nodded, petting the sides of Finnegan Skybarker’s face to calm them down. It only seemed to make them go crazier.

Finnegan Skybarker really couldn’t control a goddamn part of their body. They started lunging around and escaping Hunk’s hold only to go wild, spinning in circles in front of Lance before knocking straight into his folded legs and tumbling into his lap. They squirmed madly before settling, panting hard and accepting all of the pets Lance gave them.

“Oh _gods_ , I love them so much,” Lance confessed, wrapping his arms around Sky’s neck and rocking the both of them to and fro on the wood porch. “What kind of dog are they?”

“Australian Shepherd. Finn was the runt of the litter, hence… how small they are,” Hunk confessed, crouching down in front of Lance and scratching his hand beneath Sky’s ears. Lance looked up at Hunk’s gentle brown eyes where they were stationed on Sky. Lance could see how intimidating Hunk could be, considering his heavy, solid brow and how bulky his muscles were in general, but… he could see the tender side of Hunk as… endearing.

Heaviness started to push at the backs of Lance’s eyes, and Hunk seemed to notice it when he looked up.

Hunk pushed himself to his feet and clapped his hands. “C’mon, up. Up,” he said, and Sky lunged off Lance’s legs and to the door. Lance followed after them, squinting past the suddenly almost unbearable sunlight. The inside of the house seemed pitch black until the moment Lance’s eyes finally adjusted, and the pressure behind his eyes began to fade. He could still feel it churning, and asked to sit down for a moment.

Hunk took him by the arm and walked him over to the living room where the windows were open and drawing in the sunlight. He started to close them when Lance said, “No, no. I like the sunlight.”

“How are you feeling though?”

“Fine. Thank you.”

Lance looked past Hunk as he went to fetch water from the kitchen, talking aimlessly about “the doctor’s orders” and how he had to stay hydrated. The kitchen was in view of the living room from over the countertop, and with the yellowing-wallpaper, the sunlight seemed golden against Hunk’s white tank top. Sky stayed put, though, and hopped up onto the couch beside Lance. They nuzzled into Lance’s side and propped their head up on his laugh. Lance combed his fingers through Sky’s hair as he squinted up at the old-fashioned light fixture without caps overhead—just exposed bulbs to light the living room in the dark.

“I’m guessing you want a big fancy meal, huh? After being fed liquid food for two weeks,” Hunk commented as he opened a cabinet and took out a water bottle absolutely littered with stickers. It was _massive_ , and Lance wondered if it was the size of his head.

“Big fancy meal, huh? I wouldn’t complain,” he confessed, looking around and hoping Hunk didn’t notice. He felt guilty, acting like the new visitor experiencing unfamiliar territory for the first time.

There wasn’t really a foyer, so much as there was a closet next to the living room, with a bathroom hidden behind the slowly-closing front door. When Hunk walked over, he kicked it shut and handed Lance the full water bottle before locking the door and hanging his key up on the wall. Lance nearly drowned the sound of his grumbling stomach with the bubble of water gurgling in his water bottle.

He hesitated, startled by the sensation in his stomach. He scowled down at it, and panicked a little at the feel of his stomach gurgling like the water in his bottle.

“Why’s it doing that?” he asked, looking up at where Hunk turned away from the closet and followed Lance’s concerned gaze to his stomach.

He threw his head back laughing. “Are you serious? Oh my God, Lance, it just means you’re hungry,” he chuckled, brushing tears from his eyes as he wandered back to kitchen, taking in the scarce contents of their refrigerator with a dejected stare.

“What is it?” Lance asked.

“Oh, I… just… didn’t have time to go grocery shopping while you were gone. Not much in here,” he confessed, pushing his hands onto his hips before an “Aha!” moment swept over. He grabbed the remaining eggs from a carton, and stooped under the counter to grab something. Lance sat up taller to see where Hunk disappeared to, and jumped when the man popped back up with a pan. “Thoughts on eggs-in-toast?”

“What’s that?

“S’where you jab a hole through a piece of toast and cook an egg in it. We used to make it all the time,” Hunk explained, setting the eggs down. “It’s super simple. I actually work tomorrow so you could make this yourself if you wanted.”

“Oh, I don’t know—I don’t remember how to use a stove,” Lance confessed, scratching the back of his head. “Well, I mean… they make me nervous.”

“Then I’ll show you how to use it,” he reassured, gesturing for Lance to come over. He glanced nervously down at where Sky looked up, eyes so clear like glass. Lance ruffled their fur once more before standing and moseying over to where Hunk showed him the electric stove. There wasn’t a huge fire for Lance to worry about. Still, his anxiety spiked when the eggs started sizzling on the stove, contained within the toast, and he kept asking, “Do we take it off? We have to turn off the heat now—” to which Hunk replied, “It’s fine, don’t worry about it. Give it a little more time.”

And then he just… walked off.

Lance bristled from where he stood in the kitchen, watching Hunk walk across the living room, humming to himself. “Where are you going! The eggs—!” Lance shrieked, jumping from foot to foot as Hunk waved his hand dismissively at him.

“I just have to go to the bathroom. I’ll be right back.”

Hunk disappeared into another room, and Lance continued to stand there, torn between following after Hunk and watching over the stove. In fear of setting the house on fire, Lance stuck to the counter, fingers nervously drumming on the countertop as his eyes flitted around the room. His attention landed on the refrigerator, covered in photographs and reminder sticky notes.

Lance wandered over to all those pictures and studied the ones that included him in them. These all… _looked_ like him—at least, as far as he knew. He squinted at them and plucked off one that included Hunk, too, and the both of them sitting together on a boat. At the marina, probably. The back of the picture was dated two years ago, with the caption reading “First day of the season!” in elegant cursive handwriting. The caption explained why the both of them were huddled in blankets, smiling beyond their hats with the rocky mountain coast behind them.

“Now we can flip the toast,” Hunk’s voice popped up again as he wandered through the archway to the kitchen. “Oh—yeah, that was from my mom’s extensive collection of embarrassing pictures. You have more pictures in your room.”

“I do?”

“Uh, _yeah_ —you love taking pictures. You have a fancy camera and everything. It took you all summer to save up for it,” he said, and after he flipped the eggs-in-toast, he rubbed at his forehead to try and ease the tension over his brow. “Probably a good thing you got the camera two summers ago. You’re probably gonna be working to pay off the medical bills now—not exactly any free cash for buying a camera.”

“Is it… really that bad?” Lance asked, feeling his nerves bundle in his chest.

“Yeah, but you know what? It’ll be fine. Everything’s gonna be fine. A lot of people are willing to help you out, so… nothing to worry about,” Hunk reassured him, clapping him on the back. “Luckily you have a lot of rich tourists who love you and a few of them donated to the fundraiser page. One of the families is staying at the lodge all this week and they asked about you when they signed up for hiking the other day.”

“What do you mean? About… rich tourists.”

“It’s, like… I don’t know how to explain it,” Hunk started as he pushed the toast around on the pan before flipping it up and onto a plate. “Well, the ski resort is this _entire_ town called Altea, and it basically consists of stupidly overpriced retail shops, restaurants, bars, and, like, your usual athletic shit you find at resorts. It’s a hot spot for rich peoples’ honeymoons when they want to _seem_ outdoorsy, but in a luxury way, I guess?

“It’s all kind of backwards and a lot of the people who work there are stuck-up rich kids whose parents pay for the travel to live here,” Hunk explained with a sigh. “And it wasn’t until, like, fifteen years ago that this all really happened. There was practically _nothing_ here before Altea happened.”

“Why not?” Lance asked.

“This hotshot billionaire funneled a bunch of money into the resort, and my parents’ marina was here at the time but it wasn’t doing too good until tourists started coming by. The resort used to be inaccessible and was just… this destination for people to hike to. But then they monopolized the area and now there’s hotels everywhere and stores and stuff, and… I mean the glacier lake is still there and all but it’s just not the same.

“One time when we were kids, your family came to visit us here,” he said, handing a fork over to Lance, who shuffled over and took a seat at the counter across from Hunk. “We were _really_ little, but… I remember taking the hike to the lake, when all the construction was first starting. The entire place went up in the span of three years—I’m not even kidding you. After the road was put in, construction guys started flooding up here and tearing apart the forests around the lake.”

“That’s terrible,” Lance said.

“I know! And I mean, they did a lot to preserve the rest of the wildlife, but… it’s basically like Disney World or whatever. This guy decided to buy the whole place out, and turn it into a rich peoples’ amusement park.”

“I take it you don’t really like Altea, huh?” Lance asked, and Hunk shrugged, slicing through his toast and taking a bite out of it. “So then what are you still doing here? If you don’t like Altea and all that.”

“My parents’ marina has been doing really well. Since, you know, the whole resort went up,” he explained. “So I work there part-time, and I’m a waiter at one of the resort restaurants. And I’ve always loved it in this town. There’s a lot of cool people here, don’t get me wrong. Even if they’re all self-centered assholes.”

They giggled together, and Lance tucked his head against his hand and watched Hunk swallow down a mouthful of eggs. “Do I like it here?” Lance asked quietly, and pursed his lips when Hunk looked up at him.

The man hesitated, but smiled nonetheless. “Yeah. You like it here,” he said. “You have, like, your own personal _dream_ job. I don’t see how you _couldn’t_ be happy.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because you love nature. And you get to talk about nature. And you love talking, and a lot of the people who come here annually dote on you and give you good tips because they basically hire you to be their tour guide just so they can talk to you about how rich and perfect they are,” Hunk explained, laughing a little as Lance blushed, surprised by how well that fit his personality. He _did_ love talking.

They finished up their meal before Hunk was suggesting Lance look at all the other pictures in his room. “Your room’s closest to the stairs, to the left. Stairs are right there—yeah, next to the closet.”

Lance started towards them. His legs still felt numb—like they weren’t attached to him or his brain, but somehow they managed to carry him across the apartment. and climbed up to the first landing where a window peered out to the opposite house. His hand gravitated to the railing as he circled it and continued up. Hunk’s footsteps sounded behind him, climbing the carpeted stairs after Lance. “My room’s down the hall and on the right if you’re ever looking for me,” he told Lance, who nodded glancing behind him to where Hunk stopped a step below Lance. They were about the same height now.

 _Stop blushing, you idiot_ , Lance scolded himself, pushing a hand to his cheek as he turned the handle on his door and pushed it open.

He leant against the doorframe, and was startled by the sheer amount of _shit on the walls_. “Holy fuck, who threw up an entire album on the walls?” he blurted out, and instantly slapped his hand over his mouth. “Shit, sorry—I- I didn’t mean to swear.”

He looked back at Hunk, who was equally as startled as Lance. He was so surprised that he burst out laughing. “The doctor _did_ say you might experience bursts of anger or whatever, so I won’t take the swearing personally.”

“I- I _never_ swear—I mean, right? I don’t swear,” Lance squeaked out, eyes wide and horrified as Hunk followed Lance into the room. The floors were wooden, and it reminded Lance that he was still wearing the shoes Hunk brought to the hospital for him.

He hesitantly plucked them off, reassuring himself that this was _his_ room—he could keep his things in here, right?

Hunk just seemed more amused than anything. Meanwhile, Lance was thinking hard about _why_ it din’t sound right to cuss like that. It was a normal form of verbal expression—he shouldn’t be panicking over it.

“It’s fine. Here, I’ll show you the photos. You have them organized _super_ well. When you’re stressed you like to clean things and one day you just took all the photos down and reorganized them,” he explained, waltzing through the room with purpose. Lance watched as Hunk squinted at all the pictures before pointing to the wall across from the window facing their neighbor. “This one you dedicated to your family back home, and ya get a lot of old pictures from my Ma, too. This half of the wall is us, because it transitions into moving here with me…

“See, this is when you and your Ma when on a cross-country road trip with all your stuff in a trailer,” Hunk explained, pointing to a series of pictures outside a suburban house with an attached garage. There was a U-Haul trailer hooked onto the back of a pickup truck, and Lance was wedged between a middle-aged couple. “I mean, your mom was cool about you leaving after everything that happened during the Disaster Of 2015.”

“Why was it a disaster?” he asked quietly, running his finger down the even rows of photographs, and the space he left between them. Rearranging all these pictures felt like something… he should remember. Pictures in general should be something he _remembered_ because they were captured memories. But none of these were filing away like they should have, dropped into folders among other thoughts and feelings he had at the time.

“I don’t know if you want to go over that right now,” Hunk confessed, and offered a small smile when Lance donned a questioning look. “I think talking about it makes— _made—_ you super uncomfortable. You hid it really well, though. You were secretly depressed for almost two weeks after you came here. Like, you loved the idea of moving to _Canada_ , but the circumstances just… weren’t the greatest. And my Ma was pissed at your Ma at the time so it was tense while we were unpacking everything.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. _But_ , you work at the hiking facility in downtown Altea. I mean, they still want you back, but they understand that you have stuff to go through. The owner—Miss Rolond—actually sent you a get-well card the other day when everyone got wind about the doctors prepping you to wake up and stuff since your body was all healed and ready to go. And—I’ve been wondering—do you _remember_ anything? About being under?” Hunk asked as Lance paced around the bed at the center of the room, and stood staring up at photographs of him and Hunk, Hunk and him.

Hunk was _everywhere_ in Lance’s life. He was there at the ocean, on the beach, when they were kids walking down city streets. Downtown Chicago—Lance recognized it as well as he could, and the great big silver bean sculpture. Their faces were warped through the reflection as teenagers, featuring Lance with his arms around Hunk, and Hunk with his arms around Lance’s shoulders. They were so _close_ in all these pictures that Lance wondered—

“I asked if you remember anything from being in a coma,” Hunk repeated.

“Hm? Oh, the coma,” Lance blurted out, turning away from the photographs. He went over to the dresser across the room, and ran his fingers over the smooth, stained wood. “I… remember not being able to open my eyes? And, like, peoples’ hands touching me. To get me on and off the bed, ya know? And… washing my hair…” Lance combed his fingers through his short, soft hair, following the motion of the nurses combing over his scalp until his fingers reached his scar.

Lance looked down at his feet, pursing his lips. Hunk took a seat on the edge of the bed, and hesitantly, Lance sat beside him.

“Nothing feels right,” he confessed quietly.

“Do you need some pain meds?” Hunk asked, concerned, but Lance shook his head a fraction.

He reached a hand up to the bandage. The pain there. The swelling in his skull that caused him to lose his memory, and the doctors to slip him into a medically induced coma. “I feel like I’m not supposed to be here. Nothing’s right. Why am I here?” he asked, the strain of it causing his eyes to well up with tears that spilled over before he could stop them. “This isn’t who I am…”

“Oh, Lance,” Hunk said, pulling Lance into the gentlest hug. It was so overwhelmingly warm and inviting that Lance could definitely see why someone would be in a relationship with Hunk—even a version of his past-self.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY. ABOUT. THE DELAY.   
> School's been kicking my butt, but I have no plans on abandoning this book. I have the entire thing planned and I'm not about to let all that planning go to waste XD
> 
> [Fight me on Tumblr!](http://girlskylark.tumblr.com/)


	5. promises

“I’m going to fucking _end her_ ,” Keith snarled as he faded out of the shadows. His boots sunk in the sand, staggering him. He fucking hated sand. It always got between his toes. You could spend two months not realizing a grain of it was stuck underneath your nail. He kicked the sand with his boots before turning to say, “Do you think this is some kind of fucking game, huh? Is _that_ why you sent your clone to Allura?”

Pidge looked disoriented as she staggered out of the bubble of darkness on the beach. Acxa was already several steps ahead of them, standing on the edge of some narrow beach that was surrounded on either side by mountains and buildings. Pidge stood in the shade of the concrete staircase leading down to the beach, and he’d never seen Pidge quite so nauseous before.

She stumbled to the side and dry-heaved onto the sand, hands resting on the concrete wall. Keith rolled his eyes—shadow travel wasn’t _nearly_ as disorienting as sky travel, in his own personal opinion. But then again, he bounced around through shadowy areas ever since he was a kid.

Thinking back on it, he really _did_ cause his father’s attendants more than one heart attack with the amount of times he fell through shadow portals…

He distracted himself with that thought as Pidge regained her composure. “I’m not meant for _shadow travel_ , you asshat! You can’t just drag me through there and expect me to come out all right,” she snapped at him.

“Well, maybe that’s exactly why I did it. We’re here now, aren’t we?” he said.

“I made it through fine,” Acxa commented under her breath, examining her gloved fingers before adding, “Maybe you’re just _weak_.”

“You’re _really_ testing me today,” Pidge hissed. “I don’t care how pretty you are—I’ll end you in five seconds flat.”

“Aw, not two seconds? _Darn_ ,” Acxa taunted. “Thought you were better than that.”

“Holy fuck—can we stop talking for _five minutes_? Please?” Keith exclaimed.

“ _No!_ Like hell I’m gonna shut up—I helped you find Lance, but I am _not_ going to help you wander through the Mortal Realm,” Pidge snapped. “And besides—Allura was happenstance. I’m still learning how to separate my clones from one another—it might have… slipped while I was talking to her in Homerealm.”

“ _Slipped_?” he seethed. “Something like this doesn’t just _slip_ , you fucking snake—you did that on purpose. And now Allura’s going to tell her father, and prevent Lance from ever becoming a fucking god again, and everything will go to shit! They’ll start a war with the Underworld!”

“Not my problem!” she cried out. “You signed up for this the second you started entertaining Lance.” They glared at one another before Pidge looked away meekly from Keith’s now-black eyes, the heat inside of him licking up the exterior of his forearms. “Right, well, I _really_ don’t want to be a part of your ‘reunion’ with Lance. So I’ll see you later, yeah?”

“You aren’t going _anywhere_ ,” Keith growled, reaching over to grab her and drag her across the beach. Acxa cautiously stepped to the side to avoid the sparks Pidge let loose on him, but with his soul-crushing blackened skin, they felt more like light taps on the wrist.

She started kicking sand at him, cussing up a storm. She writhed around and wiggled until Keith was forced to pin her to the sand where the gentle, tame tides lapped a few centimeters from her hair. He gritted his teeth and shoved her head into the water so it pooled around her paper-white skin, and stuck to her cheeks as she bared her teeth at him.

Above Pidge’s feral snarling, Acxa shouted, “Whoa, whoa— _hey!_ Not exactly the _time_ to be fucking around! We’re on a tight schedule, yeah?”

Keith sneered at Pidge before looking over at his friend. She had her hands out at her sides, an exasperated expression on her face. “Pidge, tell Keith to fuck off and get back to business,” she demanded.

“As if!” she seethed, wrenching her hands up to grab at Keith’s throat.

“Ey! Stop fighting, both of you!” Acxa shouted. “Don’t make me get the stick out!”

Keith groaned, and Pidge groaned louder, dropping her arms awkwardly around Keith’s. He still had his fists bunched up in her coat lapels. He glared at Acxa, who did _not_ look like she was in the mood for horsing around. He scoffed, “You wouldn’t pull the stick out on us.”

Acxa slapped her hands together, and instantly Keith was backing off. “Whoa, okay, you better put that shit away. We’re in public,” he said, and Pidge snorted from the ground, raising up on her elbows as the tide lapped around her arms.

“Oh, piss off,” Acxa sneered, turning her hands into fists that had Keith throwing his arms up in surrender.

“What, ‘fraid of getting your arse kicked again by a _girl_?” Pidge cooed, sticking her tongue out at Keith. He lurched towards her in the same instant she zapped from this reality into another, taking a spark of lightning with her.

Keith screamed and kicked the sand where Pidge once was. Acxa dropped her hands, the threat now gone, and pinched her fingers over the bridge of her nose. “Well. Better get to it then, yeah? Off to the hospital we go,” she said, slapping him on the shoulder. He was so furious that he couldn’t even be bothered to will his black eyes to fade away.

“We need to find him before it gets dark,” Keith said. “Think you could help with that?”

“That’s part of the plan,” she said, rushing up the concrete steps and out of the sand.

Keith followed suit, saying, “Yeah, well, it’d be nice if ya _told me_ what the plan is.”

He glanced behind them, to where the horizon was, and where the sun would set in no more and no less than three hours. It would have work for them, and he was grateful that Acxa was on his side for that. It wasn’t often that he asked to slow time.

He was starting to wish that every second Lance spent with him took years instead of moments. Maybe then it would feel as though they had spent a lifetime together instead of one simple year.

They pegged down the hospital from over the abandoned railroad tracks that lined the ocean. Over the horizon in the west, they watched the sky darken into billowing thunderclouds. They were barely off the tracks before they noticed the sound of the storm in the distance—miles off into the ocean where it brewed.

Keith turned to look at it, panic rising as Acxa cursed at the dark clouds in the west. To anyone else, it was just your average thunderstorm, but Keith could feel the weight of it settling on his chest where Lance was supposed to be. And sure, since Lance’s disappearance, there had been an unusual number of thunderstorms in various timelines where Alfor had strong influences, but this just seemed too convenient.

“We need to find him— _fast_ ,” Acxa said as Keith turned to run towards the hospital.

The sliding doors crashed open, seemingly without cause. The woman at the front desk jumped in surprise, struck by a chill that swept over her and the other inhabitants in the immediate vicinity. Their startled attention graduated to a slow, gentle halt as if frozen by water. The ceiling fans hesitated, pressing against the force of Acxa and Keith’s abrupt entry.

“You’ve always been a performer,” he commented to her, and waved a hand in front of the barely-moving face of one of the men in the waiting room.

Acxa rolled her eyes, heading for the front desk. Keith beat her there, swinging over the desk and springing the computers out of their frozen states. He collapsed into a rolling chair and brought himself over to the keyboard, grimacing at the sight of it. “Gods, this is so outdated,” Acxa commented, leaning against Keith’s shoulder as he navigated the interface—Pidge wasn’t the only one who was tech-savvy. It wasn’t even necessarily a matter of him understanding the interface at all.

With just a flick of his wrist, he took care of the access codes. He typed in Lance’s name and dug his medical records up from the encrypted doctor’s files. “He was here this morning. Says they checked him out around noon yesterday.”

Acxa reached out to peg the current time. It was nearly _six in the evening_. “ _Shit,_ he’s been out for over twenty-four hours. Where does he live? You think Allura’s gotten to him?”

“No clue. But I imagine Alfor’s pissing himself over _something_ ,” he mused, snatching a pen and paper to write down the address listed under Lance’s name.

“This is _shit_ , Keith. Even remnants of gods are just sitting targets. You know how to navigate?”

He pocketed the paper, practically grumbling it in the heat between his fingers. “I’m not a _child_.”

“Geez, ‘cause lately you’ve been _acting like a spoiled brat_ ,” she snapped at him as she stormed back around the desk. As Keith followed, time started to move once again and seize back the foyer of the hospital.

He clenched his teeth to keep from screaming like the spoiled brat she thought he was. He knew she meant it out of some weird, twisted adoration for him—after all these centuries, he still considered her to be more of a sibling to him than Takashi ever was.

He pulled the paper up to read the address, and found half the paper already smoldering in black. He shook it off and burned the words into his skull so he wouldn’t ever forget where he’d find Lance again. It’d already been _far_ too long since he last saw Lance, and the thought of seeing him again was almost too much to bear. How could he let something like this happen? How could he let himself fall so hopelessly head-over-heels for a man like Lance?

  


. . .

  


The next day Lance woke up with his eyes crusty from tears. He scrubbed them away in their bathroom sink, and stared at himself in the mirror. He could barely even recognize himself, but there was something distinctly familiar about it that he _knew_ was the real him. The real him wasn’t supposed to be here in an apartment on the beach, without a _real_ view of the ocean.

A knock sounded on the bathroom door, and Lance looked over as Hunk tried the handle. “Hey buddy. Ya know the doc said you shouldn’t be locking doors. Ya know—in case you hurt yourself or whatever.” Lance reached over and pushed the door open, looking at a half-awake Hunk rubbing at his bedhead. “Not that I don’t trust you or anything,” Hunk added, smirking at Lance as he wandered in and stood beside him in the mirror.

They stared at one another until an idea passed over Hunk’s expression. “Wait a minute. If you don’t remember a whole lot, do you even recognize yourself?”

“A little. Like he’s… a distant friend,” Lance confessed, crossing his arms and staring himself down. He squinted a little. “But… that’s okay! I don’t mind being a stranger to myself for a little while. What are we doing today?”

“Well, _you_ aren’t doing much. I have to go to work.”

Lance watched as Hunk squeezed toothpaste onto his brush and started scrubbing his teeth. “Could I come with you?” Lance asked hesitantly, meeting Hunk’s gaze through their reflection.

“Probs not,” he mumbled around the foam and spat it out. “But I mean, you could hang by the beach nearby the marina! You can’t go all-out swimming because of the head wound, but… you could sit on the beach and stuff.”

Lance beamed at his reflection. That sounded… _really_ nice. He’d like that.

So Hunk helped Lance balance as he got ready for the day. He wasn’t allowed to take showers, so Hunk set up a bath for him and helped him change afterwards because standing on one leg was _tough_ , and Lance’s head panicked whenever he tried and purposefully made him dizzy—the little shit. Lance would clobber himself if he could for making _changing clothes_ a difficult task. But either way, Hunk seemed okay with helping Lance out, and it just caused Lance to blush all over again.

He could barely sleep the night before his revelation. His guilt stemmed from watching Hunk have to pretend like they weren’t dating for the sake of easing Lance back into his normal, everyday life.

Before leaving the house, Lance sat down in front of Finnegan Skybarker and frantically pet every last inch of their surface area. They leapt eagerly around and weaseled their way into his lap as he cooed, “Who’s a good Finny? Who’s a good Finny! You are! You are!”

Hunk shook his head from where he stood in front of the refrigerator, uncapping a dry erase marker. He rubbed away the letters underneath some elegant script that read “Gender Of The Day” and wrote, “Wiggly Lass.”

Lance repeated it back to him and asked, “What makes you think that?”

Hunk shrugged and said, “I just get that vibe today. She’ll probably be anxious today when our neighbor comes by to let her out. Sky sometimes gets separation anxiety ‘cause she sometimes thinks we abandon her when we go to work.”

“Oh—maybe I should stay here today then?” Lance asked, holding Finnegan to his chest as she panted loudly in his ear.

“She’ll be fine. I mean, she’s gotten better these past few months,” Hunk promised. “So if you want to go to the beach you still can.”

Lance worried his lip between his teeth, clutching his hands around Finnegan. He’d see Finnegan when they got back. He’d snuggle with Finny-winny all through the evening. He opted to go to the beach, and gave a few last kisses to Finn’s fur before getting up to go.

Hunk drove them through the downtown on their way to the marina, and the beach nearby it. Lance could see the boats from the peak of the town, but up close, he was able to see the shoreline, the docks, the harbor where it stood tucked away on the Sound. There were sailboats across the harbor, and fishing boats, speed boats, all named and titled with stick-on letters on the sides. Hunk walked Lance out onto the pier attached to the shoreline, and the parking lot connected to it, so he could show Lance his family’s fishing boat.

He refused to let Lance near it in fear of him getting too close to the ledge and falling in.

Lance squinted at the name over the marina’s doors and read it out loud. “‘E.G. Marina.”

“Ernest Garrett. My grandpa,” Hunk explained. “He owned the place and my parents’ estate before he died and passed it down to our family. S’why we moved here way back when.”

“Ah,” Lance hummed. “So you work for the E.G. Marina then.”

“That I do,” he replied with a swing of his arms. Theatrical.

“What’s the name of the place I work for? Miss… Rolond owns it?”

“Right! Yeah, it’s um… it’s called Shaylin Adventure Resort.”

“ _Shaylin_ Adventure Resort? Isn’t that a goddess?” Lance asked, and Hunk laughed.

“Wow, you can’t remember my name, but you remember the name of a mythical goddess?” he said, amused. “But yeah, she’s, like, an earth goddess or whatever. I don’t really know. We learned about that in middle school.”

“Yeah, but why’s her name in the title? Does she own the place or something?” Lance asked, but Hunk was laughing so much that he suddenly felt ridiculous. His cheeks colored as Hunk brushed away nonexistent tears.

“Man—Two weeks and I missed your jokes. But no—the owner isn’t a badass earth goddess,” Hunk reassured him, still smiling as he swung his arms his arms back and forth, swinging the beach bag with him.

It was blue with palm leaves on it, and Lance loved every bit of it. “Where’d I get it?” he asked, still fawning over it as Hunk helped spread Lance’s towel over the pure white sand. It was one of those manmade beaches for families, but this early in the morning, there weren’t many kids around.

“Um… It was a while ago. It might actually be from your parents,” Hunk confessed. “Because your birthday’s in July, so everyone ends up getting you something summer-related. Like… this is your favorite towel, for example. I got it for you when we were in middle school,” he said, gesturing to the faded dyes. “Hence why the design is basically nonexistent now.”

“Oh! So cool!” Lance exclaimed, and sat himself down on top of it. He smiled up at Hunk. “Thanks for helping me down here. I’ll just be chilling here until you’re done with work.”

“Sounds good. Don’t wander too far. And if you do wander, text me or something. I put your phone in your bag, and— _oh_ , right, your password.” He ducked down beside Lance and reached over to pull the bag over their laps. Hunk stayed close, shoulder brushing Lance’s, and he brought the phone screen up for Lance to see. “It’s just your sister’s name. _Rosa_. Good?”

Lance was already pink from being so close to Hunk. That boy’s smile could stop deforestation and cure cancer. He felt his throat closing up because _damn_ , no one should be allowed to look that precious, especially not at _Lance_. It made him wonder what he ever did to deserve someone like Hunk, who took care of him even when they were complete strangers after Lance’s head injury.

He cleared his throat and took the phone, “Uh, yeah. Sounds good. Thanks.”

Before Hunk left, he pulled out a pair of sunglasses and slid them over Lance’s eyes. “In case it gets sunny,” he said with a wink. Lance turned all shades of red and more, eyes wide behind the tinted lenses as he watched Hunk push himself back to his feet. He brushed off his trousers as he wandered back to the path leading up to the marina parking lot. There was a peninsula of broken-up concrete slabs, sticking out into the water and separating the harbor from the beach Lance sat on.

Lance could sit on that beach of _hours_ , maybe _days_ even. Watching the waves was such a mindless task that filled his thoughts and made it possible for him to be nothing and everything all at once. He didn’t have to _be_ anyone, just sitting there on the beach. No one had to recognize him. He could just let his thoughts curl beneath the tides, and recede into the ocean.

He fell asleep after some time, and woke up to the sunlight peaking out from behind the clouds. The sky was blindingly white, so he squinted as he sat up, and later stood up. He wandered to the edge of the water, and hardly minded how bitter cold it was. He stood ankle-deep for a while until his toes were numb and he had to take a break. It was like the ocean was a liquid ice bath, and the tides seemed to continuously churn up freezing temperatures just for him.

As he stretched his arms up over his head, he started to hear voices coming his way. He looked down the beach and found it empty, but behind him, he saw two people walking down the asphalt trail that connected the parking lot to the sand.

Hunk was easily recognizable from his bulky physique, and heavily tanned skin. He was naturally dark in color, but the summer pitched him closer to his black hair color. Beside him was a strikingly different hue of white left elegantly flowing over her shoulders. It seemed her eyes were stationed on Lance the entire time they were in focus with one another.

Lance’s chest seized up. Why did this woman, above all else, seem the most familiar? He was struck by the lonesome sensation in his stomach suddenly fading—he wasn’t alone, surrounded by vaguely familiar things, and things unfamiliar to him altogether. Not anymore, anyways.

“Allura,” he breathed, the throbbing in his head bursting into tears running down his cheeks as he scrambled in the sand, ditching the sunglasses, and running towards them. Allura, the woman in white, started sprinting towards him. “Allura—!”

“Whoa, hey—! You shouldn’t be running!” Hunk cried out, too late.

Allura and Lance collided, arms around one another sobbing. It hurt _so much to cry_. It felt like his entire head was on fire. Why was everything so blindingly white? Painfully so? Lance hid his eyes against her bare shoulder.

It took a few moments of blubbering before they registered that Hunk was standing there, dumbfounded. “Um… how do you know this journalist?” he asked Lance, who looked up in confusion. He glanced between Hunk and Allura, his brain trying to weld together the disjointed thoughts in his head. Everything that once seemed like a dream—so fantastic and impractical—were suddenly becoming… _logical_.

And—what the _fuck_ was he doing here?

“I-I don’t understand. I’m not supposed to be here… am I?” he started, holding Allura at arm’s length as he surveyed Hunk, scrutinizing every part of the man standing beside his _actual sister_.

Her soft blue eyes regarded him as he thought through it all. So _this_ was why he felt so odd, so sluggish and _unreal_. He hated this clunky body he lumbered around in, and the constant pulsing in his brain insisted that _pain was a common thing_. His flesh was soft, his heart—beating like that of a mortal human. His body—fragile like one.

“I-I’m not supposed to be here,” he stammered out, stepping away from her and clutching at his head. “Oh _gods_ , why am I _here?_ ”

“It’s okay, Lance—I brought you here. Everything’s fine,” Hunk insisted, and turned to Allura. “Maybe you should leave. My Ma was right—Lance shouldn’t be talking with any journalists—”

“That’s good because I’m not a journalist,” she told him with a wave of her hand. “Time for you to go. My apologies.”

She twisted her fingers and jolted them back the way they came. Hunk’s eyes went unfocused for a moment, expression resetting like a machine. He turned on his heels and started away again, a casual bounce in his step as he hummed to himself.

Lance watched him go, and surprised himself by how his instincts told him to keep Hunk nearby. Maybe he found some solace in the mortal? They _were_ dating—somehow—someway—which meant that at some point Lance _must_ have trusted Hunk immensely. The man was one big teddybear and Lance couldn’t help himself in thinking about how he needed that sort of comfort now.

He looked at his sister, breathing hard as the panic settled inside of him in a way that felt and _was_ all-encompassing. He’d never _ever_ felt so _awful_ in his entire life. He wasn’t supposed to feel so emotionally conflicted, and it was tipping him overboard.

“I- I think I’m going to pass out,” he panted, about to stumble onto his beach towel when Allura jolted forward and caught him, lowering him down.

“I’m sorry this happened to you, Lance,” she confessed, brow twisted up in distress as she brushed a hand over his forehead, and where the doctors shaved his hair around his head wound.

It took a moment for either of them to say anything. Lance managed to breathe again, though he felt lightheaded all the same as he uttered, “Why… am I _mortal_? What the fuck happened to me? I don’t want to _be here—_ ”

“I know, I know. But—right now it’s for the best,” she told him, and when his eyes grew wide in terror and he tried to argue, she silenced him. “I’m going to talk to Father. I think he’ll agree with me when he hears everything, and you will too. But… everything will be taken care of. We’ll move you some place _safe_ , and with other demigods like you, where Zarkon’s corruptions won’t find you.”

He’d completely forgotten about the corruptions. He’d always been terrified of them—ever since he was small and just borne from the pearl of a clam. People talked about them as horrific beasts who could devour minor gods like himself—to stay away from them at all costs.

Demigods were vulnerable. They couldn’t defend themselves like the gods could.

“Don’t leave me here,” Lance pleaded, petrified as he clung to her. “I don’t want to be here, Allura. They’ll _kill me—_ ”

“I told you I’ll protect you,” she promised. “I’ll talk to Father and have everything taken care of before nightfall. You have _nothing to be afraid of_.”

She combed her hands through his hair and gave him a kiss on the temple. His entire face felt hot and sticky with tears as she hugged him. “Besides. I’m your big sister—it’s my sworn duty to take care of you. I wish I could have prevented this from happening.”

He felt her calm certainty seep down his spine, silencing his quivering terror. He hid himself in her hair that smelled of sea salt and _Homerealm. Home._ He wanted to go home. Everything about being human was _wrong_ and _unnatural_. Where was the water that carried him everywhere? Why was his beautiful, elegant tail suddenly reduced to two parts, unseemly divided into legs? It wasn’t fair that Allura was comforting him, telling him that _everything would be all right_ when _nothing_ was okay. She still had her perfect life as a goddess of the moon, and she was out here lecturing him on how to remain calm during trying times.

It wasn’t fair.

“I was going to go straight to him, but… I wanted to make sure you were all right. And that you were unharmed for the most part,” she confessed, referring to their father, and the fact that Lance wasn’t devoured alive by the corruptions. It helped that he was injured and a slave to a sleep schedule.

“Yeah. I did wake up once last night but that was just for pain pills. Hunk set up a cowbell for me to ring if I wake up in the middle of the night and need medication,” Lance confessed, suddenly _furious_ at the idea of it. He shouldn’t need medication. He shouldn’t be _in pain_.

“He seems like a nice guy. If you could have been stuck with any mortal, I’m glad it’s him,” she said. “Just… try not to reel him into this. We don’t want the corruptions going after him, too.”

“Agreed,” he said, because the last thing he wanted was for Hunk to become involved with problems the gods were supposed to be taking care of. They were doing a shit job as of late, and Lance’s father always blamed Zarkon for it. But for the most part, Lance was indifferent. Shit like that happened once in a while—souls getting corrupted and emerging into the Mortal Realm to wreck havoc.

Allura pet his hair once more. He closed his eyes against her touch before the fear of her disappearance caused his eyes to pop open again. “What happened to me?” he asked quietly. “Did I do something wrong? Is father angry with me?”

“No, not at all. Father didn’t know where you were for over a year,” she confessed. “I’ve been trying to hunt you down—”

“Why couldn’t you find me?”

“Because even messenger gods like Pidge don’t have unlimited access to the Underworld. You were down there _all this time_ right beneath me and I _never knew_ ,” she sighed, touching their foreheads lightly together. They breathed simultaneously, and Lance felt the vigor of her sentiment drift into his chest, and seize his heart with anger. “You were with Zarkon’s son. Kogane did this to you, Lance, and I _swear_ he’s going to _pay for it_. I swear to _God—_ ”

“That’s a mighty promise,” he commented. “Why would Kogane do such a thing? Why was I with him?”

He tried to even _remember_ what Zarkon’s son looked like. The only times he ever saw the shadows of Zarkon’s figure were during mass gatherings of the gods—and even then it was from so far away. Kogane was nothing more than a speck among the rest of them. Lance was much the same, being a minor god to his father who had over a thousand sons and daughters.

He couldn’t see any reason as to why he’d be with _Kogane_ for an entire _year_.

“He seduced you or some fucked up shit. You were his fuck toy for a year and I did _nothing_ to stop it. I was so worried about you—and because of it Kogane pissed off his father and so Zarkon zapped you here,” she explained, and Lance’s eyes went wide, staring at her as she leant back and seethed silently for a moment, fists clenched over her knees. Her mass of white hair lifted like it was submerged in water, raised like a cat tensing its haunches. “I can’t believe he did all those things to you. He soiled you and I wasn’t there to _stop it_.”

“Hey, it’s okay—”

“ _No it isn’t!_ ” she cried out, slamming her hands down. The ocean seemed to still for a split second, only to have the roar of its waves rise with her voice. “Kogane doesn’t deserve someone as pure as you! _No one does_. And he took you like you were nothing, and kept you in the Underworld without _any_ connection back to me or father. We didn’t know where you were and he was _devastated_.”

She brushed her hands over her cheeks where crystalline tears collected like dewdrops on her skin. They dotted her cheeks like fresh freckles as her sharp blue eyes met his. Stern as ever. “I _promise you_ that we will get revenge on them for doing this to you. Your turning mortal won’t be for nothing, I _swear it_ , Lance.”

She sat with Lance, their hands linked together, and their attention drawn out to the water. She massaged his fingers, and after a few minutes, she reached up to brush her fingers gingerly over Lance’s short hair, and back to where it was shaved. He closed his eyes, and tried once again to accept the fact that he was in this body now. He would just have to live with this temporarily weak body until Allura sorted everything out with Father.

 _Father must be so disappointed in me_ , he thought, twisting his lips together to keep from crying. He bit down on his lower lip, and succeeded until Allura pulled him in for a hug. her hugs always managed to make him feel better, and it seemed that now, the only way he could feel better was to let it all out.

She stayed with him until he stopped crying into her dress. She combed her hands once more through his hair before saying, “I should go talk to Father. The sooner the better, yeah?”

He pulled away, rubbing his hands over his eyes and nodding. “Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good. S- Sorry for… crying all over you.”

She smiled fondly at him. “I don’t mind one bit. You’re my favorite sibling.”

“Wow—that’s… really something. Considering how many siblings we have. And I’m your favorite one?” he said, laughing nervously as he scratched the back of his head. She giggled, and he hadn’t realized he was looking everywhere but her until she stuck the sunglasses back on his face.

“My favorite little guppy,” she promised.

She got up to leave, and Lance watched after her as she retreated into the water. The chilly ocean water pulled her under, and she was gone without even a bubble in her place. The moment she left, though, Lance was on his feet.

He ran into the ocean after her, feeling the bitter chill of being human all over again. He felt the cold, the agonizing heat, the emotional destruction he pitched himself into trying to control nature like he used to. He was useless to the waves—helpless under their pull as he tried to go deeper and deeper. He swam out as far as he could before being completely taken out by a tidal wave crashing into him.

Lance went under, choking as he tried to breathe in the water. Salt stung at his eyes and sent him gasping to the surface. His clothes were soaked through, and dragging him down as he let the waves coax him back to the sand. He gathered his bearings and stood, feeling the water chill over his exposed wound—the scar Hunk was constantly worried would reopen. The skin was puckered and fragile, and Lance couldn’t blame the guy.

Still, though, he stood facing the ocean and screamed out his fury. His yell did little else than cause a gentle stir in the foam, and part the wave coming in to take him back. As much as he tried, he couldn’t form monstrous waves like he knew he was capable of. No matter how much he jolted his arms up, the water refused to obey his commands.

“ _Fuck!_ ” he shouted into the wind, arms thrown out at his sides. “ _Fuuuck yooou!_ ”

“Jesus, what’s going on over here?” Hunk’s voice sounded far off behind him, and he twisted around, finding his boyfriend sauntering over with a baggie in hand. “I can’t imagine a little splashing is enough to make someone _that_ angry. What’s the mat— _shit_ , you’re _soaked_.”

Hunk buried over and flicked the sand off of Lance’s beach towel. It was over Lance’s head, and he stood there as Hunk gently scrubbed away at his hair and gingerly over the scar on his hairline. Lance stood there and took it because the expression on his face was enough to tell just how _devastated_ he was. He couldn’t breathe underwater. He couldn’t control the water. He couldn’t do _anything_ that defined who he was as a god. That was all _gone_ along with any shred of happiness he could have felt. He half-wished Allura hadn’t said a word, or even _come here_ to show him just how much he was missing.

“I wish I could remain ignorant forever,” Lance confessed, chest constricting and tightening his throat. “This isn’t _fair_.”

“God, don’t I know that, man. Two weeks—just _gone_. But that’s okay though,” he said, voice reassuring and calm and uninfluenced like Allura’s tended to be. “Because _I_ am going to help _you_ get back into the swing of things. Which doesn’t involve shouting curses at the sea, because what did the Sound ever do to you? _Nothing_ —except, well, almost _drowning_ you, but…”

He faded off as Lance reached a hand up over his eye and giggled. “Thanks Hunk. The sea never did anything to me. I’m just being childish.”

“And that is perfectly acceptable. No probably about it. How else are we supposed to play off eating a pound of candy as being socially acceptable without claiming we are all children on the inside,” Hunk declared, nose turned up as he headed off to pick up the lunch baggie. Lance had the towel still pulled over his head and wrapped around his shoulders.

Lance had nothing against mortals unless he himself was actually mortal— _then_ he had a problem with it. But Hunk… Hunk was everything Lance’s father claimed mortals were. Pure, kind, misguided creations that needed assistance. And Lance wanted the best for Hunk.

They spent Hunk’s lunch break on the beach, shorts full of sand by the end of it. Hunk brushed it off and headed back to work, claiming he’d be back in another two hours to go home. In the end, Lance wound up cleaning up his spot on the beach and walking off to the marina in search of Hunk. He could only tolerate so much silence before it drove him completely _mad_. So, he ended up walking through the front door and listening to the bell ring over his head.

It was a small room inside the marina, featuring a rounded countertop and a dark-skinned woman behind it wearing colorful, rectangular glasses. She was typing away on the computer until she saw Lance walk in, and she pushed her glasses up into the curls of her brown hair.

“Lance!” she cried out, jumping to her feet. He jumped, startled by the greeting. The woman looked embarrassed with herself, but it didn’t stop her from scurrying around the counter to meet him. “Oh—Sorry, I forget. I’m Hunk’s mother, but you can call me Penny.”

“Oh,” he said. “Nice to meet you. I guess.” He cringed a little, but she brushed it aside in favor of enveloping him in a hug. She was everything warm and motherly, though she was nothing compared to Shaylin’s hugs—

 _Shay_.

As Lance’s mind remembered Shay at the feel of such a comforting hug, Penny pulled away and gave Lance a pat on the shoulder. “I’m sorry—it’s been so _long_. How are you feeling? Hunk said you’re doing fine but I can only trust him so much. You know how it is.”

He laughed, and shared a genuine smile with her. “I’m doing better, thank you. Your son is… very sweet. I’m glad he’s here for me.”

“Oh, well, he’s always happy to help. You two have been friends since _forever_. And I’ve been talking with your mom all this time. She’s worried about you, you know. _But_ , when you’re ready, you can give her a call and she’d be happy to hear your voice. She wished she could come out here to visit when you were in the hospital, but the woman works full time—I always called her a workaholic, you know. She doesn’t seem to know when or how to stop.”

Lance leant against the counter and happily listened to Penny’s ramblings about his mom, since he couldn’t remember much about the woman to begin with. A part of him wondered if this was all for naught—that everything was irrelevant when Allura was going to talk to his _real_ father—but… for now… he didn’t mind listening to things mortals found interesting, important, _exciting_.

He stood to the side when customers came in, or people visited to talk to Penny. She always had stories to tell, rumors to spread, because while the town was small, it was full of energy and buzz. Not _everyone_ knew what was going down, and they seemed to come to _her_ to listen in on it. He found it amusing, especially when people came up to him and asked how he was. Though, there was some element of panic associated with being confronted, mainly because he had no clue what to expect from them. He was meeting everyone all over again for the first time.

When Hunk got off work, his mom treated them to ice cream down the street. Lance got far too many brain freezes from it and had to take ten-minute-long breaks to recover from each one. But despite the aches, it tasted delicious and he couldn’t stop himself from eating it as they drove home to the apartment.

They drove back through the down, and off towards the hills that climbed higher as they listened to something drowned out by the window whistling through the open windows. Their hair pulled back, blown away from their faces to let their skin feel the fresh sea salt in the air. Lance squinted out onto the dark horizon and ate ice cream from the spoon, licking it clean. The clouds were massive in the west, and collected dark shades of blue at the base where they met with the water.

“We’ve been getting a lot of storms lately,” Hunk told Lance. “Don’t be surprised if there’s a lot of thunder. We’ve been on the news and everything for it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. The past few days have been weirdly clear, though.”

Lance momentarily forgot about his father and sister. They’d be the ones stirring up those clouds, wouldn’t they? And anyone else from Homerealm that associated with the weather, and whispered to it sweet nothings that transformed into droplets of rain that pattered on their windshield. Lance closed his window, and later so did Hunk. They were sucked into a quiet bubble playing folk music all too loudly.

When Hunk pulled the car up to the side of the road in the front of their house, Lance could see Finn up on the couch cushion, staring at them with such intensity that Lance couldn’t help but laugh.

As they got out, Lance explained what was so funny as Hunk wandered over with the house keys, and made funny faces at Finnegan that had her leaping up. He put his hands in the air, and instantly Finnegan put her nose in the air and howled. Lance clasped his hands over his mouth to keep from shrieking at how adorable that was. “You taught her everything she knows,” Hunk said, nudging Lance in the side. “Tug on your ear.”

“My _what_?” Lance giggled.

“Your _ear_. See what she does.”

Lance went along with it and tugged on his ear. Finnegan leapt up onto her hind legs, nose in the air, reaching up to the side. She dropped back down to press her nose against the glass and huff.

When they at last headed up to the front door, Lance swore he saw something dark flicker away in an artificial blindspot in his vision. He blinked it away and the sudden panic emerged. It wasn’t even night—how could Zarkon’s corruptions be out in the daylight? He tensed in his seat, ice cream cup nearly crushed in his tight grasp.

Hunk fiddled with the keys as Lance searched around their neighbor’s yard for that black spot. “We have arrived!” Hunk announced, and ushered Lance into the house. He leaned back to glare at the neighboring yard once more before deciding that if Lance was ever going to be safe, it would be in the comfort of the house he lived in with Hunk, with Finnegan on his lap, and a glass of lemonade in his hand as Hunk put on a movie for the night.

Besides, Allura promised that she’d protect him anyways.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm officially deceased after season 4. You'll find me procrastinating on everything to write fanfiction now.


	6. the cure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Why is this song so on point with this chapter? You tell me XD lmao but now I'm obsessed with it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4IXxzioDAk)

Lance was just as beautiful mortal as he was immortal. 

Keith stared helplessly from across the lawn as Lance stumbled out of the car, giggling uncontrollably, saying, “She’s giving us that look like we stayed out past curfew.” His voice was just as sweet as when he first stumbled across Keith’s path. It was quiet, intimate, meant just for his companion and no one else. He felt unimaginable guilt for not being able to expose himself—for having to spy from the sidelines. He couldn’t be honest with Lance, not after everything Allura said on the beach.

_Allura_ —

His anger faded as he watched Lance make cute faces at the dog in the window. Lance reached up to his ear and tugged on it, erupting into giggles as his friend said something that had Lance laughing harder. His hair was just as short as before, with brown waves framing his face and that _beautiful smile_ that was far too perfect for mankind to even _know_.

Keith was beyond furious with himself. He sagged against the fencing of the neighbor’s house, nearly slipping all the way down had he not caught his boot on a crack in the concrete sidewalk. Acxa leaned out around the corner and cursed under her breath. “I’m surprised you kept your shit together when Allura dropped by,” she hummed quietly as they both heard the door close behind Lance and whoever that stranger was.

“That makes two of us,” Keith said, staring ahead with a blank look on his face that was rapidly growing darker. Black started to seep through his skin, and blend into the scleras of his eyes. “She fucking _got to him first—_ ”

“Look, I’ve never gotten into a feud with her before,” Acxa started, stepping back over to Keith to stare him in the eyes and say, “ _but_ , she doesn’t know who the fuck she’s dealing with, all right? We can still get him back. Do you _really think_ Alfor’s going to condone a war just because Miss Uppity says so?”

“You don’t know Allura like I do,” he said, voice pitching into that dark void his eyes all but fell into. Acxa stared at the blackness that started to consume him. “All this _shit_ with Takashi, and now she’s going after Lance too? She’s a _ruthless_ fucking _cun—_ ”

“Whoa, whoa, hang on. No need to summon your evil voodoo shit,” she insisted, waving her hands at him. “You want me to whip out the stick?”

“ _Gods,_ don’t say it like that—”

“Do. You. Want. Me. To?” she hissed, and he turned his head away so he couldn’t see the way she sighed in relief. “Good. Also, way to go. Now it’s raining and I don’t have a goddamn umbrella.”

He was unfazed by it. The rain droplets evaporated before they could touch his sizzling skin. Acxa peered up at the sky, squinting past the downpour that was only a drizzle before Lance disappeared from sight. The air smelled like wet grass and the cold that tended to come with the rain. He could smell it like moisture on his skin from a fresh shower. He felt it like his world was consumed in a dark grey mist, surrounded on all sides by _fog_.

“Zarkon said you have to convince Lance to love you again,” she said. “And who knows how long it will take for Allura and Alfor to come to an agreement. For now… Lance thinks that you’re the scum of the earth.”

“ _And_?” Keith spat at her. “Are you just going to list off every goddamn thing I’ve done wrong here?”

“Listen, Keith—Lance doesn’t even remember what you look like,” she insisted, holding her hands to her hair. He glared at her as she laughed, rain dripping down her cheeks as she smiled. “You can start over! Oh _gods_ —why didn’t we consider it before? You don’t have to explain yourself—just… sweep him off his feet, pretending that you’re mortal too!”

Keith felt a drop of water hit his forehead. He blinked at the touch of it, and watched Acxa yelp in excitement, throwing her arms up and around him as his anger faded to shock, and then relief as Acxa’s plan seeped in. He laughed and said, “Can’t say I’ve ever had a reason to pretend to be mortal. Have you?”

“Oh yeah, plenty of times. I’ll teach you, yeah?” she said, pulling back to clasp him by the shoulders and give him a shake. “We’re gonna kick _ass_ and take names and get Lance _back!_ All right?” She grabbed him by the head, and he laughed, rubbing a hand over his eyes as she repeated, “ _All right?!_ ”

“Yeah, yeah, I hear ya,” he laughed, sniffing. He hadn’t realized how upset he’d been until she had him smiling again. The future seemed promising now. “We’re gonna get him back.”

 

. . .

 

There were perks to having a strategist goddess on his team, and Keith figured that this was by far the greatest favor Acxa ever provided him with. 

It wasn’t often that he saw gods taking the form of mortals, but when he did, it was usually for shagging someone a god took a fancy to. Keith wasn’t… entirely exempt from that majority, but he liked to think that his intentions were _purer_ than that. He said so to Acxa, and huffed as he added, “I mean, it’d be _nice_ to get back into the swing of things sooner rather than later…”

“Ha, yeah, don’t tell _him_ that,” she said, spawning and obliterating outfit after outfit that flickered up on her clothing pedestal. They were in her room, and had been since that moment they left Lance’s neighbor’s house in favor of preparing for their side of the war against Allura. 

She looked over at where Keith glared at her dully. “Oh, come on. You’re just like all other gods then, huh? Horny and impatient?”

“Oh, and you’re no better?” he remarked, and she scowled at him, turning back to flick her hand at the next uniform that showed up on the wall. It burst into flames and the ash reassembled into a red button up and slacks. She grabbed it and threw it onto the pile of all of Keith’s future clothes. Evidently, he didn’t have a proper “mortal” sense of style. “Look—I see you running off with _plenty_ of women.”

“Oh really?”

“Well _yeah_. You aren’t exactly secretive about it,” he laughed, lounging his arms back against the couch cushions as Acxa threw a—holy _shit_. “No—No way, I am _not_ wearing a fucking polo.”

“Yes you are. Where we’re going, you have to.”

“ _Fuck_ no! Who am I going as, a sixty year old golfer?” he whined.

She gave him _The Look_ —the one that frequently said that he needed to shut his trap before she called him a spoiled brat again. He crossed his arms and brooded in silence as Acxa sighed and brought forth a new outfit for him to see. “Jean jacket, white shirt, black shorts.”

“No shorts.”

“Why not?”

He scuffed his boot on the corner of her elegant golden coffee table. “‘Cause I don’t like how hairy my legs are,” he muttered.

“You have _got_ to be kidding me! I haven’t shaved my legs in _ages_.”

“Well, you don’t have to,” he argued. “But I’d feel guilty if my leg hair just went _poof_! Gone. So ‘no’ to shorts.”

“It’s _summer—_ ”

“I don’t care. I’m not wearing shorts.”

Acxa glared at him as she aggressively threw down outfit after outfit for him before moving on to sort through her closet. Keith swept his hand up and had all of his clothes packed and ready to go in the time it took for Acxa to emerge from the closet, bags in hand. She had transformed into… everything they had planned. Expensive, but not gaudy; elegant, but not formal; _rich_ , but humble. She had her hair tied back into a pin so he could see the golden hoops she clipped to her ears. Her white button-up was half undone, exposing her black lace bralette. Her high-waisted shorts were what had Keith whistling.

“Oh, shut up. Get over here—I’ll show you how to look like a mortal,” she snapped at him.

The second he was near the closet, she grabbed him, and snatched his suitcase out of his hand. She pulled out the first outfit she could find and set to work. “Time for a bit of an illusion spectacle, yeah?” she said, grinning like the demon she was as she started tearing off the layers of Keith’s armor and clothes and the smell of the Underworld he tended to carry around with him—earthy, charcoal, and smoke. She disguised his scars with just a touch of her hand, and laid them across his neck where a red seam still remained from that _dreadful_ time long, long ago when his father decapitated him. 

She gave him a faint tan so he wouldn’t look like the dead. She concealed the skin around his eyes with magic that would cover up the black soot that spread when his anger got the best of him. “I can’t fix your eyes though, buddy. You’ll have to just… not get angry,” she told him. “Unless you’ve got some illusion magic on you that’s strong enough to cover it.”

“I might,” he admitted, reaching a hand up to touch his cheek as he saw himself in her mirror and nearly fainted. She tugged her hands through his hair, musing it up and tugging it back. He looked… “I miss my armor,” he confessed, rolling his shoulders back. Without that constant weight on his shoulders, he felt dull and small—less significant.

As Acxa pulled her hands down to his shoulders, and over his arms, he remembered what it felt like to have Lance there behind him, laying kisses across Keith’s skin as he exposed it inch-by-inch. He remembered how, before Lance, he had never shown every part of himself to another person. He felt frail when Lance first took him by the hand and guided him to the bed. Keith never considered himself big and hulking like Takashi—he had always been the runt of the two. But even when he tried to explain it, Lance pressed endless kisses to his mouth, silencing him with every word between their lips.

“You’re perfect for me,” Lance had said. “ _Keith_ …”

“Keith. Hey, where’d your mind run off to? Come on, Keith, we’ve got to get going. Put your damn pants on.”

Keith blinked, startled by how vivid the memory was. He could hear Lance’s breathy voice panting in his ear as he shakily scrambled into the pants Acxa threw at him. He could hear every last enunciation of Keith’s name in Lance’s mouth all at once—a symphony of passionate murmurings all for _Keith_. Aggressive, sweet, gentle, tired, purred against his skin. Keith frantically patted down the folds of his shirt so they tucked into his waistband. He fixed the buttons at the thought of Lance undoing them with his nimble fingers. 

Acxa ticked the clock back on her wrist and said, “Good thing we left when we did. The last thing Lance needs is a bunch of gods summoning all of the corruptions to him. Ready to go?”

“Uh—yeah, yeah. I’m ready,” he said, even though Lance’s hands were under his shirt, ghosting over his abdomen and following the path directly over his crotch…

“I love every part of you,” Lance whispered in his ear from behind, nipping at his earlobe as he stepped into the portal with Acxa, lit from underneath by golden rays of light. The light evaporated the apparition of Lance from Keith’s mind, but he was just as cloudy as ever. Being thrown back into Earthrealm did little to quell the desperation in Keith’s groin.

Maybe Acxa was right—he wasn’t unlike the other gods and goddesses who went to Earthrealm to fuck themselves senseless. But at least he could say that he’d spend every last waking moment with this particular mortal—he wouldn’t abandon Lance like every other god did to their lovers. He liked to think that his love for Lance made him different, made him less of a con artist when he and Acxa signed in at the front desk of a hotel in Altea. Acxa smiled like the charming young lady she feigned to be, and said, “Have a nice day,” like it mattered. Keith scowled at the woman at the front desk and swept his duffle over his shoulder as they headed for the elevator.

He propped his suitcase up beside him as Acxa sauntered in, and gave a little bow to him. “You make a fucking convincing mortal,” he said.

“I know I do. The ladies love it,” she said. “Sixth floor.”

He jabbed the button for it, and sighed, eyes rising up to the ceiling as they started to move. He wasn’t at all surprised that when Acxa swiped the key over their door, she exposed a suite they could _live in_. He had wrongly assumed it would just be like any other hotel room—narrow, with two beds, a bathroom directly to the left of the door. This was… this was…

“Excessive? I know,” she laughed. “Lance is going to _piss himself_.”

“We aren’t—” he started, stopping at the edge of the orange couches that were arranged in a half-circle, lining the stone-mortared wall that curved around the living room. 

Lance was back, and he was wearing nothing but a floral kimono he stole from Keith’s closet. He collapsed on the couch with a giddy laugh, exclaiming, “I’d live here in a heartbeat!”

“What are you looking at?” Acxa asked, approaching Keith where he remained frozen, searching for Lance’s apparition as it disappeared, and reappeared in the kitchen. 

“I—I think I’m seeing Lance’s ghost. He’s just been repeating things from when he stayed with me,” he confessed, eyes watching Lance as he jumped onto the counter and started peeling a nonexistent orange. “It used to happen a lot with Takashi… but I don’t see him often enough anymore. I see a lot of ghosts in the Forests—you know how it is.”

Lance flickered over to the wide, arching windows. They were on the top floor, overlooking Altea’s resort. Dawn was breaking, splitting up the dark patches of clouds, the shadows, the creatures lingering on the rooftops. Keith wandered over to stand beside Lance, who was talking but couldn’t be heard. Sunlight glinted off of the neighboring window, and in a matter of seconds, Lance was gone altogether. 

Lance’s reflection in the window faded a moment after his ghost did. He traced where Lance’s hand disappeared from. “Do you think this will actually work?” he asked tentatively.

Acxa came to stand beside him, setting her bags on the countertop on the way. “I mean, _yeah_ , of course I do. You managed to sweep him off his feet the first time around without even knowing it.”

He hoped she was right about this.

 

. . .

 

_This isn’t you_.

Lance woke up gasping, staring at the ceiling with eyes wide, like someone had just shocked him into existence. He panted, laying a hand over the weight on his chest. It was fuzzy, fluffy, and all things pure and wholesome. Finnegan was laying on top of him with their nose up against his bare collarbone. He scrubbed his hand over their pointed ears that flopped around when they both heard the sound of someone’s door closing across the apartment. The refrigerator door opening. 

Finnegan perked up, looking to Lance’s partially-open bedroom door. He let them run off to where Hunk was making breakfast, and nuzzled deeper under his covers to avoid the air conditioning chill. His head started throbbing once more, and he moaned miserably at the sensation of it. He wondered if Hunk saw him as weak because of it. Were humans used to this level of pain? He never felt something like it before—well, sure, he felt _godly_ pain before, but it was never like _this_. Lance wasn’t used to the internal ache. It’d be easier to fathom had it been more ethereal in nature, but this was _tangible_.

He stretched an arm out into the cold and grappled for the cowbell Hunk put on his bedside table. He rang it, and ducked guiltily under his blankets so that when Hunk came in, he wouldn’t see how guilty Lance looked. 

“Here—I have your medicine,” Hunk said. “C’mon, out from under the covers. There we go.”

Lance weaseled out, and shifted up so that his back rested against the headboard. He was grateful his blinds were closed, otherwise his headache would be infinitely worse from the sunlight. Hunk dropped a pill into Lance’s hand and gave him a glass of water to wash it down. “I’ll close the windows in the kitchen so you can come out for breakfast, okay?” Hunk said.

“M’sorry,” Lance mumbled as he took the second pill from Hunk and washed it down.

“What’ve you got to be sorry for? It’s fine, Lance,” he laughed. “In case you forgot—I’ve known you since we were in diapers. You’ve done worse things than ask for _pain medication_.”

“Like what?” he asked, smiling as Hunk sighed and scratched the back of his head. “Am I really that much of a goofball?”

“Yeah, a little bit. When we were in high school, you asked me to be your _wingman_ ,” Hunk laughed. “I mean, it wasn’t _difficult_. A lot of girls wanted to date you at the time ‘cause you were in all the sports and friend groups.”

“You’re kidding! What sports did I play?” Lance asked.

“Track, baseball, and football. You were kind of into sprinting short distances, if that says anything about that,” Hunk said, and got up to look at one of Lance’s walls for a photograph. “We… were actually in football together. I was one of the linebackers and you were a runner. Mom liked to practice her photography on us when we had games.”

He plucked several pictures from the wall and showed them to Lance. There was one of Hunk shoving between the defenses, and another of Lance sprinting with the ball. They were all lit by the stadium lights, their figures illuminated in halos of yellow against the black background. The last picture was Hunk carrying Lance bridal-style across the field to where their teammates were racing to tackle them after a win.

“We were in Little League when we were kids,” Hunk said, sitting beside him on the bed as he carded through several more pictures of them when they were younger. “You always wanted to be a quarterback ‘cause it was basically a more realistic dream of wanting to be president.”

Lance picked up one of himself after a track meet. He looked so _little_ , but so was the girl hugging him from the side. He had his arm around her, beaming at the camera. Lance felt like he should remember each of these photographs from the other side, staring at the lens of the camera as Hunk’s mom, Penny, called out, “Say ‘cheese’!”

“That’s Rachel. You two dated for a while ‘cause of… yeah. You two just dated for a while. We were all really close,” Hunk said, taking the picture back. 

“Am I still on good terms with her?” Lance asked.

“Oh yeah! Yeah, nothing changed,” he reassured Lance, shaking his head. “She actually donated to the fundraiser I had set up for your stay at the hospital. I wouldn’t be surprised if you had a few texts from her.”

“Texts?” Lance repeated, trying to figure out why that word sounded so familiar. Hunk got up from the bed, setting the photos aside to grab a device off of Lance’s dresser where he last left it after getting back from the beach. He hadn’t used it at all, mainly because he didn’t know how.

Thankfully, though, Hunk read them off to Lance, saying, “Two missed calls from your mom. Seven texts from your sister… Ah, there we go, Rachel left a shit ton to keep you company if you get bored of not being able to work yet. I told her you don’t remember much, so she left you a monologue. She’s a very thorough and organized individual.”

“Ah,” he laughed, leaning against Hunk to rest his head on his boyfriend’s shoulder as they went through all of his messages. 

The messages ranged from “I hope you feel better! Call me when you can!” to “Hey Lance! In case you don’t remember, I’m Ezor, and we work together at the Shaylin Adventure Resort—”

Hunk stopped on that voicemail and said, “ _Oh!_ That reminds me—Ezor wants to come visit sometime. She’s a good friend of your’s from the Resort. She’s actually on your lock screen.”

He shut off the phone and opened it again, showing him the picture of a girl with pink hair standing on a rock beside him. It looked like they were up in the mountains, surrounded by clouds as Lance posed like a statue, and the girl punched an arm out at the sky, the other fist on her hip. There was someone in the corner, another woman, face blurred by the camera focus. Hunk pointed to the pink-haired girl and said, “This is Ezor. You two are a _riot_. She really wants to help you get back to the Resort when you’re better.”

“I am better,” Lance said, and received a laugh for it. “Really!”

“Uh-huh, sure. Until you’re off the pain meds, I’d say you can’t go back to work. And even then I’m sure your doc would be a bit iffy about it,” he said, giving Lance’s shoulder a shake before getting up. “I’m gonna make eggs and bacon. Take your time getting out of bed—or not at all! I could just bring breakfast to you.”

“That won’t be necessary,” he laughed, and followed shortly after Hunk into the kitchen where he sat at the counter sighing hopelessly at Hunk’s backside, and those muscles exposed around his shoulder shoulder blades in that taunt green tank top. He had the barrel-chested physique of a bodybuilder—it was what made him so intimidating that time Lance woke up to Hunk being there. 

What did Lance do to deserve someone as cuddly as Hunk? There was so much to love, and Lance felt ridiculous. He felt like his father for falling so easily for the nearest, closest mortal to him. _I guess I get my hopeless romanticism from Father_ , he mused with a lovesick sigh. There were worse things to inherit. 

Hunk had to run off to work, but before he left that morning, he slapped a leash and collar into Lance’s hand and said, “This is for Sky. You could probably take them for a walk whenever you want—get to know the area again. Who knows, maybe some of the scenery will be familiar.”

When the front door closed, Lance hurried to the couch with Finn on his heels. The two of them hopped up onto the cushions, facing the window, and watched Hunk’s truck pull away and off down the road. Finn was weaseling around with energy, bumping into Lance and lunging off the couch in a flourish of circles and leaps. 

“What is it?” Lance laughed, only to have the leash in his hand tugged. “What? You wanna—? You wanna—?” Finn went into a tizzy, their excitement lurching into a bark that startled them both. Lance burst into giggles and said, “Let’s go for a… a _walk!_ Wanna go for a _walk!_ ” 

Finn barked again, leaping up to press their paws to his hip bones. At this angle, it was easy for Lance to wrap the collar around Finn’s neck and clasp it. It was kind of impossible for Lance to own a dog back in Homerealm, but… if he _did_ own a dog, he’d want one exactly like Finnegan Skybarker. 

Finn had a way of cheering up even the bleakest situations. Maybe it was their inability to control their body, or their barks, or their thrill whenever they crossed paths with strangers on the road. Whatever it was, Lance loved every bit of them and if walks were what made them happy, then they’d go on walks every goddamn day. He let Finn lead him, and with the surety in Finn’s steps, Lance figured this was a routine of theirs. 

The shops in downtown were condensed and old fashioned, and Lance loved them the same way he loved exploring ruins in the deep sea. It was just another adventure of his—being mortal. At least, he tired to see it that way, since there wasn’t much he could do now about it. Finn hopped off to sniff a nearby lamp post as Lance put a hand to his chin and peered up at the shop signs. The windows were tall and built into acheckerboard of stained glass. _Coffee_ , he hummed internally, and looked down at Finn, who tugged on the leash and stood up for some strangers that were walking by. 

“Lance!” someone shouted, startling him back to the present where he found someone shoving open the coffeeshop door. “Hey! You’re up and about!” 

“I—um, yeah, I am!” he said, frantic to answer as he tugged on Finnegan’s leash to step towards the girl stepping out onto the store stoop. She was wearing an apron with the coffeeshop company logo stitched on the chest.

“And you brought Finnegan! I missed this little guy—Hunk doesn’t come by as frequently as you do,” she explained, and introduced herself, but Lance promptly forgot her name. “You probably don’t remember me. You’re one of our regulars and I just—I had to say hey! And that my boss wants to give you a complementary drink. Feel free to stop by any time and cash in on that.”

“… Complementary drink?” he repeated, raising an eyebrow at her.

“Yeah, like, free drink for coming by all the time. And after everything that happened with you being in the hospital…” she said, pinching her fingers together as she winced at him. 

He shrugged and admitted, “I could go for a drink right now, actually. Is Finn allowed inside?”

“Not usually, but we’ll make a pass this time around,” she said, and held the door open for them. Lance hurried inside, grateful for the momentary lapse in sunlight. He lifted his sunglasses on top of his head and marveled at the chalk art on the boards and walls, and turned back to the girl who led him in. 

“What do I usually get?” he asked, clutching Finn’s leash close as his pup bounced around in excitement, sniffing at the air and wiggling their bum about. Finn couldn’t control himself and ended up bumping into Lance’s legs more than once.

“We had this coconut latte special a while ago, and you just sorta stuck with it. So… coconut and mint in your usual latte,” she said, already hurrying behind the counter to take care of it. Lance was confronted by some customers looking to pet Finn, so as he waited for his drinks to come up, he amused himself by watching people experience Finn’s wiggles for the first time.

When Lance left the coffeeshop, Finn steered him back on track, and he just hoped Finn knew the way home because he was more lost than ever. He got sidetracked again by the beach where Finn pined for the water, but Lance was too nervous to release the hound to the waves. He didn’t trust Finn _or_ himself well enough to keep track of one another. 

Lance took to sitting in the sand scratching at Finn’s fur as they watched the mountains and the clouds. The clouds seemed to be getting heavier as the day passed, and the water stilled after a while of sitting around. It felt as though Lance was consumed within a bubble of his own little world, secluded from distractions like sound and people… It reminded him of being stuck underwater, listening to the howl of distant creatures in the waves. The closest, clearest sound happened to be Finn’s panting, and then footsteps coming from across the sand. 

Lance turned just as someone walked up behind him. Lance’s attention hesitated at the man’s black shoes, his tailored jeans, and the fact that he had his hands tucked into the back pockets of his pants. His narrow waist lifted to broad shoulders, and _holy fuck_ —

“Do I… know you?” Lance asked, mouth going dry. The man looked surprised, as if _Lance_ was the one confronting _him_. 

His black hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and he lifted his sunglasses as he said, “Um… No, I don’t think so.” His voice was velvet and his body was gold and _fuck it_ if Lance wasn’t completely head-over-heels right now—

_Hold it—you’re dating Hunk,_ not _this guy_ , Lance schooled himself, but he was already patting the sand beside him to invite the stranger over. _Stranger danger! Allura would clobber you for putting your dick before your safety_ …

The guy sat beside him, their eyes still locked with hardly any attempt to turn away. Considering where Lance came from, he really _should_ be used to godly appearances, but this mortal was _seriously_ rearranging everything Lance knew about what was fair and what wasn’t. He was nearly too distracted by the symmetrical structure of the guy’s face to realize that he was being offered a hand. 

Lance shook his hand as the guy said, “My name’s Keith.”


	7. memories

Lance had never felt so automatically turned on in his entire life and he had no idea why, suddenly, he was _so_ into Asian guys.

“Are you sure we haven’t met?” he asked, raising his eyebrow. “Because—I mean, wait, sorry. You probably don’t… want to hear about my shitshow right now— _fuck_ , oh gods I didn’t mean to swear, I’m sorry.” He clasped his hands over his mouth and turned away, red as a tomato. He cursed the day he was _born_ , but somehow, he was startled out of his self-deprecation by Keith’s bubbling laughter.

“It’s fine. We’ve never met before, but I noticed you from the boardwalk,” Keith said, nodding behind him. “And—the dog…”

Lance looked down where he dropped the leash. All that was left was a trail that looked like a snake had zipped through the sand in the direction of where Finn took off to. “ _Shit!_ ” he shrieked, scrambling up and staggering under the rush that shoved through the front of his head. He swayed, clutching the side of his head as black dots swam into his vision.

“Whoa—careful. You okay?” the guy asked, getting up beside him as Lance waited for the dots to subside.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Just… Just a head rush,” he said, thinking, _That’s what Hunk calls them, right?_ The doctor had warned his boyfriend of those sorts of side effects. Mostly harmless, but it never failed to send Lance into a panic. He never… _experienced_ head rushes until now. “I’ve got to get my dog.”

When his vision speckled back together, the stranger was in front of him, his hands half-reaching for Lance as if to keep him from toppling over. Lance put his sunglasses back over his eyes, and hoped the size of them obstructed from how pink his cheeks were.

“I’ll get your dog, just stay put for a sec, all right?” he said, and Lance’s insides flipped around and twisted and turned into perfect little knots as he watched Keith run off after the trail Finn made to the water.

Finn was sloshing around in the waves, yipping in their little Finnegan Skybarker way. When Keith got close to the tides, Finn started swimming towards him, but a wave bucked over them and sent them skidding onto the sand a few feet from Keith. He tried to grab the leash, but Finn took off running and barking across the sand with Lance howling with laughter in the distance. They kicked up sand in their wake, sending Keith scrambling for the leash for a minute before he actually triumphed over the dog. Lance didn’t know what he expected of Finn, but he certainly wasn’t prepared for them to tackle him the second Keith walked them closer. 

Finn collided with Lance’s chest in a gross, wet mess, but he couldn’t find himself caring when Keith started fretting over getting Lance all dirty from the sand. “It’s fine, really. Thanks for getting Finn under control.”

“Finn? That’s a cute name. Is he your dog?”

“Sort of. Joint custody, I guess,” Lance laughed, rubbing at Finn’s damp fur and getting clumps of it stuck between his fingers. “My, uh, my boyfriend and I named them Finnegan Skybarker. But I call ‘em Finn for short. Kind of a mouthful otherwise.”

There was a moment of silence, and Lance suddenly felt guilty. He felt the guilt of mentioning his boyfriend like his heart turning to concrete in his chest. He figured the feeling would have been worse if he hadn’t said anything, but now he couldn’t look at Keith without wishing he hadn’t said it. _I’m not like my father_ , he realized dreadfully. His father had a habit of pursuing one too many mortals at a time. Lance was more of a one-man-at-a-time kind of guy.

“Your boyfriend,” Keith repeated, and Lance grimaced. Somehow he could _tell_ that they were both hung up on that now. “Oh.”

“Yeah… sorry,” he winced, “but, um…”

“I—It’s fine. Sorry for being so forward about it,” he said, “I shouldn’t have assumed…”

“Do you live here or something?” Lance asked, and as soon as he said it, he worried that this was just a chance occurrence. Hunk _did_ say that tourists were running through here all times of the year. Thankfully, though, the question prompted Keith to sit back down again, despite how his brow was now tensed over his eyes.

“No. No, I’m just… staying in Altea for a few weeks.”

“Oh? What for? Vacation or something?” Lance asked, and Keith shrugged one shoulder.

“It’s complicated, but yeah. Or something,” he said, and smiled weakly at Lance. He stared at the waves for a moment, quietly, and Lance clutched to Finn, cursing himself for making the situation so awkward. Keith started to move again, getting back to his feet. “I should probably go. Sorry for disturbing you.”

“Wait, hang on,” Lance insisted, following after Keith and setting Finn on the ground. They wiggled around on the sand as Lance brushed his shirt off, staring at Keith for a moment before recovering his train of thought. “I live around here and if you ever want to just… hang out or something? Do you have a phone or—?”

Keith hesitated, startled once again, almost as if this entire conversation with Lance was out of the blue. But Lance reveled in the fact that he succeeded in making Keith blush, and figured that was the biggest accomplishment there was. He smiled encouragingly, and managed to elicit an amused laugh from Keith.

“Yeah, sure. What are you doing tomorrow?” he asked.

Lance twisted Finn’s leash around his hand, biting into his lip before saying, “Whatever you have planned, I guess.”

Keith laughed again and said to meet him on the boardwalk the next day for lunch at eleven. Lance was certain there was no way in the world that he’d miss it, considering that immediately after Keith left, he was swooning into a sighing, lovestruck mess, thinking, _Why am I such a disaster?_ He combed both hands through his hair and tried to calm down, but there was no way in Zarkon’s name that he was going to get over Keith or Hunk any time soon.

Eventually, _somehow_ , Lance found his way back home with Finn in the lead. He didn’t know how to work the television all that well, so he spent the rest of the day shuffling through his room and all of the pictures, and then reading through all of his text messages and not responding to any of them. He listened to all of the voicemails again, and then the audio messages from Rachel that took up nearly an entire hour of his time. Each of her audio messages had to have been five minutes each, and some of them were just sleepy drawls, voice partially muffled by her pillow as she said things like, “College is killing me… save me…”

Lance snuggle with Finnegan on the living room floor with his sunglasses on because he didn’t want to close the curtains. He found a box of something delicious-tasting, so he had that open beside him so he could drop colorful rings of deliciousness into his mouth whenever he pleased. To anyone else, Lance looked unreasonably high, but that didn’t matter so much because no one was there—

—Except for Keith and Acxa in the vehicle parked outside Lance’s house.

“He can’t seriously have a boyfriend,” Acxa said. “Right? I mean, they’re probably just roommates.”

“They own a house and a _dog_ together. A _fucking dog_ ,” Keith snarled, arms crossed furiously over his chest. “But he didn’t even look like he knew what he was talking about. He can’t remember his mortal-self’s life—who _knows_ what that bastard’s doing to him.”

“I doubt Lance would date an idiot in _any_ of his lifetimes,” Acxa said, and looked as though she wanted to make a snide comment about “Except for you,” but Keith silenced the jokes with a deadly glare. “Do you _really_ think anyone’s gonna take advantage of Lance against his will?”

Keith grumbled furiously because _he wasn’t sure anymore_. Sure, when Lance was with him, everything revolved around _him_. Keith just went along with everything Lance suggested. Lance always seemed to be in charge whether he knew it or not, but with Allura…

“I don’t know,” he confessed. “I don’t think Lance has ever had a reason to feel like he’s not in control. But Acxa—he’s _mortal now_ , and _injured—_ ” He stopped talking because someone jogged by and waved to them. Acxa offered a friendly wave, but as soon as the passerby was gone, she glared at him. “What?”

“You could _try_ to act a little more courteous.”

“Why?” he asked, but she just started up the vehicle again. “What? What the fuck do you mean by ‘courteous’?”

“I just… don’t know what Lance sees in you sometimes,” she said, pulling away from the curb and making room for Hunk’s truck to pull up no more than five minutes after they departed.

Finn perked up to the sound of Hunk climbing the porch steps. Lance sat up, munching on Froot Loops when Hunk wandered in and greeted their dog with a thrilled, “My lovely fluffy bean! I missed you too! Yes I did! _Yes I did!_ ”

“What about me?” Lance pouted, and giggled as soon as Hunk started cooing to him, too. “Oh _gods_ , please stop. That’s creepier than I thought it would be!”

“Serves you _right_! What’d you have for lunch?” he asked, and Lance shrugged and pointed to the box of Froot Loops on the carpet. “Lance… that’s not lunch… if you’re ever gonna get better you gotta eat _actual_ meals.”

“Am I allowed to cook?” Lance asked, and raised an eyebrow when Hunk laughed in response and started towards the kitchen.

“‘ _Are you allowed to cook’_ of course you are!” he said. “The doctor said your short term memory isn’t an issue so I’d say you’re reliable to cook.”

“O- oh,” Lance stammered, worrying his lip between his teeth. He never had any _real_ reason to cook other than for fun, so he didn’t have any serious recipes under his belt. He figured his mortal body couldn’t live solely off of pudding pies and cakes. But now he knew how to cook eggs so… there was that, at least.

“Ok, since you look like you’re about to have an aneurysm over this,” Hunk started, ushering Lance over to the freezer, “we’ve got tons of stuff in here you can just pop in the microwave or oven. Pizza Rolls, taquitos, _Eggos_? Oh my God _Eggos_ , I forgot we bought these!”

“What are… Pizza Rolls?” Lance asked, squinting at the box. Hunk reached in and pulled it out for Lance to see. “I’ve never tried these before…”

“Of course you have! I bought a fresh box when the doctors said they were gonna pull you out of your coma,” Hunk explained. “I’ll show you how to make ‘em.”

Lance spent the late afternoon basking in Hunk’s simple glory. Hunk didn’t seem at all put off by Lance’s mediocre mortal skills, which made learning new things less humiliating on Lance’s part. He couldn’t believe that his mortal counterpart had been lucky enough to be stuck with Hunk from the day they were both in diapers.

When Lance settled down to watch a movie, Hunk tossed a blanket over Lance’s lap and fetched him his water bottle and phone before collapsing beside him. When it became clear that Lance had no clue what TV shows were like in this reality, Hunk became thrilled. They realized that Lance could relive all of his favorite movies, and so they sat around watching _Voltron: Legendary Defender_ for the—supposedly—twelfth time.

“That guy has my name,” Lance said.

“I know! When we were kids we always flipped out when people had our same names,” Hunk explained. “And you always said I looked kinda like Hunk and so _boom!_ ”

“This is where you got your nickname?” Lance said. “Then what’s your real name?”

Just as Hunk said it, someone’s car alarm went off, and so Lance never heard it properly.

  


. . .

  


Allura could never understand the way she felt about the eldest Guardian. She was absolutely positive that now, after everything that went down with Lance, she hated Keith with all her heart. Anyone who threatened the safety of her brother was automatically dead to her, and she hoped that with this impending war, she’d get to end him for good.

But the eldest Guardian of the Underworld was another story entirely. It was... complicated, to say the least. It didn’t help that they were more or less looped together against their will, but Allura wasn’t exactly complaining at the start of it. Shiro had been a longtime crush of hers, considering they were both favorites of their fathers, and ended up seeing each other on occasion for “family get-togethers.” He always looked so... _intimidating_ , and calm. He always had the look of a soldier on his face, and Allura liked to think that he was courteous. He’d be the man to stand up for chivalry—at least, that was what her brain came up with over the years. She mentioned her amiability towards Shirogane more than once to her father, which she figured now was the reason Alfor thought it would be advantageous to suggest the marriage to Zarkon.

Despite the fact that Allura and Shiro now bore traditional marital ring marks, they hardly acted like the married couple she thought they’d be. She expected him to be loyal, but Shiro seemed to have wasted all of his loyalty efforts on his father over the centuries. She rarely ever found Shiro anywhere other than the Underworld—which, despite the marriage, was still off limits to her. He never had any reason to leave, considering that Allura was low on his priority lists.

Which, she supposed, was why she was so surprised to find him in the foyer of her estate the day she got back from Homerealm.

“Oh,” she said, expression souring. She had enough of Zarkon’s youngest son for the day—she didn’t think she’d have to deal with Takashi, too. “Well, what is it? What do you want?”

She was then made aware of the worry line between Takashi’s brows, and how he fiddled with his hands behind his back. _Clearly something’s upset him_ , she thought. She only ever saw him stoic as can be—he never made himself vulnerable, even to his supposed wife.

“I’m sorry to... intrude like this. I know you probably don’t appreciate me coming here,” he started, eyes drifting to the floor. “I was... I was wondering if you’ve seen my brother around? By any chance?”

Allura couldn’t bother hiding her unchecked rage. Her hair bristled like static, though she said, “Why would I have any reason to see him?”

“So you have seen him,” he concluded, and Allura stalked off with a groan. “Please, can you tell me where he is? I made a mistake and I’m trying to rectify it. I don’t want him to do anything rash—“

“Well, you’re a little late for that. In case you _didn’t know_ , he kidnapped my brother and has been holding him in the Underworld for the past year. _So_ _sorry_ if I’m not in the mood to talk to you right now!” she said with a bitter laugh. She hurried down the steps that exited the foyer—they fanned out in a crescent-shape, mimicking the tiled mural on the floor where Takashi hurried after her across the moon portrait beneath their feet. The atrium filled with the echoes of their voices rising against one another as Shiro said:

“How I understand it is that this _isn’t_ Keith’s fault—he never asked for Lance to come to the Underworld in the first place—”

“How can you say that, and yet agree that all of the awful things your brother did to Lance is true?”

“They’re both hormonal gods, Allura—haven’t you come to terms with the fact that not everyone is as _perfect as you!_ ” he shouted, and the severity of his voice caused Allura to stop and stare at him. His expression proved that he _knew_ that he had crossed a line, but now that he was already over it, he plunged onwards. “It wasn’t Keith’s fault that my father turned Lance mortal—the only reason my father found out was because I told him. Lance strayed into my sector one day and I reported it to my father. In case you haven’t noticed, most gods _can’t_ enter the Underworld without permission of some kind.”

“Then… this is technically _your_ fault, for telling your father.”

“Yes, but—”

“Did it ever occur to you that you should have contacted _Lance’s_ father? Or me, even?” she hissed.

“My allegiance doesn’t fall under either of you—Zarkon is my superior, and _as my superior—_ ”

“How in the world did Lance end up in the Underworld in the first place?” she demanded. “You said so yourself—you can only enter with permission.”

Takashi put a hand over his forehead, pushing it back through the white streaks in his hair. His hair looked frosted, and Allura knew that his fingers were blistering cold. “I have no clue. I’ve been trying to figure that out—he came in through the Forests, and Keith’s the only one who has constant surveillance of that area. I imagine he must have noticed Lance and went to investigate, and then the two of them met. You know as well as I do what… happens after that.”

She crossed her arms, her agitation clear with the way her hair ruffled around her shoulders. “So… you’ve made yourself clear about Lance not being kidnapped…”

“ _Clearly_ ,” Takashi hissed, turning away with his hands in his hair. Each second, the fragments of white frost spread. “ _Gods_ , this is such a disaster. I’ve never seen that look on Keith’s face before.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, expression narrowing as Takashi turned back to her. She pulled his hands from where they were crystalizing his hair. “Did you… _see_ …?”

“ _Yes_. I tried to stop my father—I- I’m so sorry, Allura. I didn’t expect him to react like this,” he said, and there was one thing certain about Takashi that Allura knew—it was that he was awful at hiding the emotions that he had. “So you saw Keith? He found Lance?”

“I don’t—I don’t know about _found_ , exactly…” she hummed, pulling a hand away to pinch between her teeth. “Why?”

“The only way to restore Lance’s godhood is for Keith to convince Lance to love him again. We just need to stall Alfor from finding out that Lance is mortal and in Earthrealm,” he explained. “But the chances of Alfor finding the exact reality Lance was dropped in is—”

“Possible,” Allura finished, wincing as Takashi paused, lifting an eyebrow at her to continue. “I… _may_ or may not have already found Lance. I was planning on having my father transport him to one of the… one of the demigod sanctuaries…”

Takashi drew a hand over his face, covering his mouth as Allura finished with, “He already knows, Takashi.”

“Fucking spectacular,” he seethed. “Where are they? I have to warn them—if they don’t know already.”

Allura told him, and a moment later, he dissolved into a shadow portal on the wall. She could feel him calling to her for hours after that, but she learned the hard way that she wasn’t on his mind because he wanted to see her.

  


. . .

  


Lance peaked between the living room blinds as another flash of lightning slashed through the sky. The entire street lit up, as if exposed by studio lights for the flash of a camera—strobe lights. The torrents of rain washed down the kitchen windows in sheets. Finnegan Skybarker took to huddling between Lance’s legs under the blanket he had tucked around the two of them. After each crash of thunder, Finn would shudder against him, paws kneading into Lance’s legs.

“The weather’s been weird lately, huh?” Hunk said from the kitchen. “If it keeps up, I don’t know if I’ll be able to go to work. My parents usually close the shop during bad weather.”

“Why?”

“Well, you can’t really rent boats out when it’s pouring rain,” he said, heading back to the living room with two mugs of hot chocolate in his hands. Just as Lance got his mug settled, the lights flickered, and shut off completely.

It was too close to night for comfort. Lance’s eyes went wide as Hunk laughed, dropping onto the couch beside him as the faint evening light cast a blue glow over their shoulders. Finnegan whined under the blanket, nudging Lance’s hand and nearly making him spill his hot chocolate. “Um… what happened to the lights?”

“Oh, the power just went out. It might take a little while for them to come back on. Usually it doesn’t last more than a few minutes,” Hunk reassured him. “I can take Sky off your hands if you want—”

“No, I’m fine,” Lance said, hugging Finn to him as he started drinking his cocoa. “Is… there a flashlight or something we could turn on?” He couldn’t hide the wavering of his voice, and Hunk had known Lance well enough before to catch it.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll find something,” Hunk reassured him, and the second he wandered off to look for a flashlight, Lance shut his eyes and hoped to the gods that the movement of the shadows weren’t the corrupted souls from the Underworld.

By the time Hunk came back, the lights were back on, but they kept the flashlights nearby throughout the duration of the movie Hunk put on his laptop. Lance had opened his eyes the instant the living room was safe, and watched frightfully as the shadows receded fast, crouching in small, dark places where they could emerge once night claimed the living room again. Lance couldn’t keep his eyes off of them, and he allowed himself a moment to seek shelter against Hunk’s side, tipping his head onto his boyfriend’s shoulder, and trying to pretend like he was just… another mortal, unaware of the monsters that sought to kill them in the night.

The reality of his situation made it impossible for him to forget just how fragile he was. His headaches, the head rushes, the sensitivity to light all proved this. He could already start to feel the strange, crawling sensation of "forgetfulness" starting to come upon him. His memories of the day were drifting into dreamlike states of vagueness, where he could only remember how he had felt upon seeing Keith on the beach... He had the strong urge to see Keith again, if only to remember what his face looked like.

 _If I was a god, I wouldn't have to worry about forgetting what that man looked like_ , he reminded himself bitterly as the credits started to roll. He was still curled up against Hunk's side, with Finn wedged between them. He looked up into Hunk's face, to remind himself again of how lucky he was to have fallen into this life he had with Finnegan Skybarker, at the end of the Sound…

"What are you looking at?" Hunk said, amused.  


Lance turned away with a blush, but his confidence came back, and he looked up at Hunk again to say, "I must've been lucky, ending up here with you."  


"Aw, no need to get sappy with me," he laughed. "But yeah, it is a good life. I think... even though you'll have to be trained again for work... that you'll really like it. Before, you were always so happy to go to the Center."  


"And Ezor will be there?"  


"Yeah, she'll be there."  


"I'd like to meet her then," he resolved, patting his hands on Finn's back. "She seems like she's fun to hang out with. I was looking at pictures of us earlier, on... this _Facebook app_." He held up his phone to Hunk, who squinted at it and started laughing. "What?"  


"Oh my God, you don't remember Facebook. This is priceless—it's, like, your online profile. And you keep in touch with all of your family members on there, and they post pictures and stuff to keep their relatives updated," Hunk explained, taking the phone from Lance to show him. Lance leaned in to see—pictures of babies, of kids... more kids... "I mean, you've only got two siblings, but you have a lot of relatives who've gotten married recently—or, semi-recently."  


"Really?" Lance hummed. "Well, do they know about me?"  


"Of course they do." _Right, human families are a bit smaller than mine..._ he realized, feeling embarrassed to have forgotten that bit. "The last thing you posted was actually of you and Ezor. But a lot of people have been swamping your profile with 'Get Well Soon!' messages, so ya gotta scroll a bit to see 'em." "No kidding. But they all know about the... accident?" Lance said.  


"Yeah. You can see my profile here," Hunk said, searching his name in the bar, and pulling up a profile titled _Hunk Garrett_ , with a profile picture featuring Hunk in the snow. "We get free rides up onto the mountain. There's snow up there even in the summer."  


"That's so cool..."  


"Oh, but here—'Lance McClain is doing well! Woke up this morning, but is suffering from amnesia. We're heading home soon!' and then basically all of your extended family liked it and commented, so that's why there's, like, a hundred comments. And... is also probably why your inbox has, like, a hundred messages…"

"Yeah. I was too nervous to open them," Lance confessed, wincing at the sight of the red notification bubble. "Do you think they'll get mad that I'm ignoring them?"  


"Your mom might—she's a bit of a pushover—but... you _could_ just post one big post about how you're doing to update everyone at once, and then excuse the fact that you haven't been answering to anyone," Hunk suggested, and just as Lance was about to agree to it, Hunk waved him off and insisted, "We'll do that tomorrow. It's kind of late to be doing anything insane, and we've got to give you your medicine for tonight."  


Lance groaned, and as Hunk got up, Finn chased after him, and left Lance cold on all sides, exposed to the elements. He bundled the blanket around him, and brooded until Hunk came back with the box of pills. He popped open the one for that day as Lance took the glass of water Hunk laid out on the coffee table. Lance took his pills reluctantly, and glared at Finn across the room, who didn't have to worry about taking medicine before bed, or brushing their teeth for that matter.  


As Lance got ready for bed, he wondered more about that mysterious cute boy on the beach, and wondered what he was doing that night in Altea. He started to conjure up weird stories in his head as he closed his eyes and waited for sleep to drown them out. He imagined that Keith was a _spy_ of some sort—maybe there was some criminal currently at Altea working on some convoluted, mastermind plan that involved the smuggling of drugs to powerful people. Altea was full of them—it _was_ a rich-persons' resort, after all.  


_I wonder if Keith had a gun on him then, if he's a spy and all_ , Lance wondered, and figured that after Keith left, he got into a slick convertible and called his boss to let him know that he was going to end the threat that night. It'd be a super cryptic call, along the lines of, "I'm taking care of it. Tonight." followed by Keith hanging up the phone, tossing it into the passenger's seat, and speeding off.  


_But what was he doing at the Sound anyways?_ He was getting off a ferry—one of the Garrett's boats that came from Vancouver, where Keith had gotten off a plane, rented the convertible, and boarded a ferry to get to Altea. Upon exiting the ferry, he spied Lance sitting there. It was one of those romantic, slow motion shots, but mostly, there was just really nice lighting that complimented Finnegan's spots of golden-red fur as they raced across the sand.

Lance hadn’t realized that he was dreaming until morning, when he woke up in the midst of some godawful romantic sitcom featuring himself as the star, and Keith as the daring, dashing love interest. In the meantime, though, Keith _was_ fighting the bad guys, though they weren’t exactly “people.”

“We have to trust that Lance can take care of himself,” Acxa told Keith that night as they watched the corruptions emerge from the mountains in vast clouds of utter blackness. “He knows how to keep them away.”

“I know—but it makes me nervous. Even if the smallest of them latch on—”

“They won’t,” Acxa reassured him. “And you have to maintain your—”  
Keith had already vaulted off of the hotel rooftop, shedding his mortal image in the process. Acxa sighed, and simply cast her hands out, materializing her staff in a glean of golden dust. “I suppose it’s either this or dealing with his minuscule attention span during a movie,” she told herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Tumblr :)](http://girlskylark.tumblr.com/)


	8. daytime date-time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance and Keith have a date planned, but things get complicated when Lance starts to recall memories from his counterpart's life and realizes that he's becoming more and more mortal as the days go by.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm an absolute animal omfg I abandoned this chapter halfway through and I'm, like, just now exiting my writer's block so I cranked the rest of it out D: 
> 
> Since I'm always in the writing-zone, my writer's blocks are more like... not allowing me to work on things I actually want to work on, you know? And so I write whatever automatically inspires me at the time so that I can just push out _something_. Otherwise I'm just a blob who sits on Tumblr feeling sorry for not writing what I want XD

Lance woke up in the morning at the sudden, but painful memory of when he hit his head.

The realization was so startling that he tried to convince himself that he couldn’t remember it at all, but it was coming back stronger than ever, and soon he couldn’t escape the visual of the meteor shower he, Hunk, and several girls from Altea had been watching. That wasn’t exactly their main point for going out _way_ beyond Altea—mostly, it was to find a secluded spot on the Sound where no one would bother to notice them skinny dipping in the freezing ocean water.

_Why am I remembering this when this isn’t even me?_ he demanded, clutching his hair as he sat up, bent over his knees.

The water had been so bitter cold that he was still shivering after five minutes in the summer air. He hurried out of the water, teeth chattering as he listened to something one of the girls had said—it was so easy to forget what people said word-for-word in hindsight, but it was difficult to forget the way he felt as he wrapped a towel around himself and dried off. _I can’t believe I’m here doing this. I wish it could be like this forever—spending the summer in Altea_. 

He hurried into his boxers and climbed the nearby rock to rise up over all of them—they had used it to dive into the ocean, and now Lance could look down and see the moon ripple around them in the water as Hunk dunked all the way under and emerged gasping, yelling, “So cold! S-So cold!” 

“ _Weak!_ ” someone had said— _Ezor_. Her hair was bright against all the others as she splashed water at Hunk, only to have it returned full force.

Lance noticed something glint across the surface of the water, followed by streams of other lights casting white and orange arcs up in the sky. “Whoa! Guys, look! Meteor shower!” 

Lance’s memories turned white—blank, like they should have been. 

Lance bit his thumbnail between his teeth, thinking, _I shouldn’t be remembering my counterpart’s memories, unless…_

_Unless I’m becoming more mortal than demigod now_.

 

. . .

 

The storm outside was doing little to soothe Keith’s frayed nervous. They came back to the hotel long after the storm started, since it just seemed to cause the corruptions to double their spawn rate. Acxa had been soaked, and was now dried off and tucked into one of the fuzzy robes in the bed. Keith, on the other hand, had been too furious to let a single drop of water touch him. The heat radiating from his skin sent the water droplets near him hissing into steam, and he could tell that it would take hours for him to suppress his magic in preparation for his date with Lance.

“So… what are you planning on doing with Lance today?” Acxa asked from the bed as Keith snapped his fingers between outfits before settling on one of the less summery options Acxa grudgingly agreed to bring with them. He still had some work to do on his mortal appearance after scrapping it last night, and he couldn’t quite shed that ethereal glow immortals tended to have.

He sighed from behind the partially closed bathroom door and said, “I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far ahead…”

“Are you kidding me?” she whined. 

“Not all of us can plan things ahead of time, _Acxa_ ,” he snapped, yanking the door open to glare at her. His eye sockets frosted over with gray, which just made him more irritated. It just caused his skin to turn darker, more like the charcoal color that mimicked how his father tended to look when he was furious with Keith. 

“Just… ask him to show you around?”

“He doesn’t _know the area_ ,” Keith scoffed. 

“Then that’s perfect! You both can get to know the area and walk around and talk.”

“ _Talk_?” he scoffed. What a strangely _mortal_ thing to do. Sure, he and Lance talked before, but Keith was more or less a silent individual when he was in the Underworld. They coexisted in his quiet atmosphere, and… Keith had really appreciated it. Besides, he was always open to just _listen_ , and Lance was always open to just talk Keith’s ear off about irrelevant topics. “He’s technically _mortal_ now. What am I going to talk to him about?” he said, narrowing his eyes at Acxa as he yanked his belt tight and fastened it. 

“I don’t know. I mean, you always said Lance guides the conversation. Nothing’s changed, really—just let him talk,” she suggested. 

“And if he asks _me_ any questions? What then? It’s not like I can mention Zarkon or Takashi if he asks what my family is like,” Keith said with a bitter laugh. Yeah, as if _that_ would go well. Lance may not remember Keith, but he certainly knew Zarkon and Shirogane well enough.

Just as Keith was pulling on a tank top, he felt something shift in the air. He looked around, stepping into the room further as Acxa took note of his intense focus. “What is it?” she asked in a whisper. “Corruptions?”

“No—” he started, but was interrupted by the sensation of Underworld magic tightening. It pooled into a dense spot in the corner of the room, sending the bedroom curtains quivering, and buffeting as— _shit_.

Takashi emerged from one of the shadow portals, and the instant he saw Keith completely ready to set the entire room on fire, he held his hands up in surrender. “I just want to talk,” Takashi insisted.

“ _Talk_?” Acxa laughed, and stood on the bed so she was a whole foot taller than him. “You’re _real_ funny, you know that?”

The first thing Keith noticed about his brother was the fact that Takashi’s hair was entirely white, and despite how much Keith hated Takashi right then, he couldn’t ignore the fact that something was wrong. Of the two of them, Takashi had the most control of his powers, and the fact that he was starting to let his magic seep into his physical form had Keith worrying a little—just a little. 

“I talked to Allura to see if she could help,” Takashi started.

“A little late for that,” Keith spat at him.

“I know, and that’s why I’m here,” he said, and relaxed slightly when the tension in Keith’s stance faded. “She’s already talked to Alfor.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Keith said, hand going to his throat as he looked at Acxa. Her shoulders slumped, hands going slack at her side. “That… explains the weather…”

“Yeah, no kidding,” she huffed, dropping down from the bed to pace towards the window. It looked like their room was stuck in a carwash, and they were just sitting there watching the water run down the windows in soapy torrents.

Takashi turned away from the view to look at his brother sternly and say, “If Alfor finds you here—”

“I can handle myself,” Keith hissed.

“I know you can, but _against Alfor?_ Keith, be reasonable,” Takashi hissed. “Unless you’re _absolutely certain_ you can win Lance over, you shouldn’t _be here_.”

“I can,” Keith said, pressing the words sharply as he found himself looking between Acxa and Takashi, as if searching for agreement he knew wasn’t there anymore. “I can do this, honestly, Takashi.”

“But Keith—Lance has a _boyfriend here_ ,” Acxa insisted. “And Allura’s already screwed this whole shitshow up by ruining his impression of the real you.”

“So what do you expect me to do!” he yelled. “You’re the strategist here— _think of something!_ ”

Acxa clamped her mouth shut and turned away. She crossed her arms as she bit out, “You’re just looking for answers that will make you feel better. I don’t have any for you.”

Keith balled his fists up as he turned his gaze to the ceiling. He could feel the embers crawling along his wrists, scorching his forearms, and turning his frustrations into raw, agonizing _heat_. He just wanted them to understand exactly how he felt, but there was no way in Zarkon’s name that either of them could begin to comprehend it. The gods were notorious for tossing their insignificant feelings around because they were supposed to be “above worldly problems” like that. Keith believed in that, at least he used to believe in it before Lance showed up and took him by the hand and the heart.

At last, Keith looked at Takashi, tears sizzling on his cheeks as he said, “I know you think I’m being childish, but if being a god means _sacrificing_ the only thing—the only _person—_ I’ve ever felt anything for, then you’re out of your goddamn mind.”

Takashi stared at him, lips drawn together tight as he swallowed down Keith’s words and said, “Okay. But I can’t let you do this on your own. It’s my fault this happened, and I’ll do anything to make it right again. I know you say that Lance is the only person you’ve ever felt anything for, but… You’re my only brother and even though I don’t act like it, I still love you, Keith. I still care about you.”

Keith let out a stuffy laugh and brushed his fingers through his hair. “Yeah, well, that all makes it fucking difficult for me to say the same,” he said. “Now if you don’t _mind_ , if neither of you are going to fucking help me, I’d prefer to do this alone.”

“Keith…” Acxa said.

“ _No_. No, you’ve made your dubiety _blatantly obvious_ ,” he hissed, snatching his wallet off the table, a flannel off of a nearby chair, and headed for the door. 

In the same moment Keith slammed the door behind him, Lance shut the bathroom door in his wake and unzipped his jeans. He lifted the toilet lid and sighed at the sound of piss expelling itself from his system. Something told him he didn’t always have to hold his dick for irrelevant tasks, but now pissing became relevant and common, and he loathed it. All other forms of dick-holding were for pleasure until now. How _humiliating_ this act was.

“ _Laaance_ ,” Hunk called out from the kitchen.

“ _Whaaat_ ,” Lance shouted back.

“Mini Wheats or Cheerios?”

“Um…” _What was the difference again?_ “Cherrios!” he said. They sounded happy, but really, after washing his hands and leaving the bathroom, he found out that they were just tan ringlets bathing in some cloudy white substance. He raised an eyebrow at Hunk from over the counter. Hunk raised his eyebrows back, and then Lance was smiling again and scooping “cheerios” into his mouth.

Hunk left to get ready for work. It was overcast, and the winds were high—Lance could hear them whistling—but it wasn’t thundering out. A constant mist was in the air, and Lance found himself fretting over his father. He wasn’t sure why.

Lance was busy staring out the window when Hunk came back to the main room with Finnegan on his heels. “I’ll be back later today—I’m training someone for closing time so don’t wait for me to eat dinner and whatever,” Hunk said. “And be sure to watch after Finn, alright? Take him out whenever he scratches the bell on the door.”

“Finn? Thought it was Sky to you,” Lance said in amusement, pushing himself off the stool to follow Hunk to the door.

“He’s a Finn today, I think. He’s just giving me those vibes—you know the ones,” Hunk said, and together the two of them studied the stout Aussie wagging his tail at them. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know. I trust your judgement,” Lance said. “You seem to know Finnegan Skybarker better than me these days.”

Hunk laughed, and casually threw his arms around Lance’s shoulders. Lance’s insides lit on fire—that was the right thing to say. He beamed at Hunk, and leant in to the half-hug. 

They stayed there for a moment, and Lance wasn’t sure if it was because Hunk still had time left before he had to leave, or if he was just indulging Lance. Whatever the case, Lance felt all warm and fuzzy inside, and emphasized this by placing a deliberate kiss to Hunk’s stubbly cheek.

The action was met with a nervous laugh.

“What was that for?” Hunk asked, and everything warm and fuzzy shriveled up into Lance’s stomach.

He felt sick. “I—Well, aren’t we—?” he started, stepping back from Hunk immediately. He clutched his hands in front of him, turning bright red as Hunk raised a confused eyebrow.

Hunk’s expression burst with realization, “Oh! Oh, oh my God, Lance, it’s alright—no, I get it.”

“We’re dating, aren’t we?” Lance squeaked. “All the pictures—”

“Oh, Lance, buddy, no, we aren’t. Oh my God—Oh my God, everyone said we had a bromance going on I forgot to tone it down,” Hunk said, clutching his hands to his face. “I know you probably know this, and I know this, but you’re totally gay, but I just sorta hang around in the middle and sometimes it’s this and sometimes it’s that, but mostly I—I like girls, Lance. See, this one time I thought I might, you know, and that was back in high school and I might have kissed you but you weren’t into it and were super chill so this, like… We’re even now! We’re even now, and that’s all that matters.”

Lance put his hands over his face to keep from looking at Hunk and bursting into humiliated tears. Finn scratched at his leg. “I- I’m so sorry. Oh gods, I’m so sorry—”

“Dude, it’s fine, honestly. To be completely honest, I’m hella flattered right now. Like, Lance? You’re a real catch,” Hunk said, and if Lance wasn’t so embarrassed he would have laughed. 

Lance wasn’t looking, and so he was surprised when he felt Hunk’s arms fall around him and give him a tight squeeze. “I’m… gonna head to work. You just… hang out? Don’t feel pressured to take Finn on a walk—the weather’s awful today.”

“Okay,” he said, voice quiet.

“And don’t worry about the kiss thing. Honest mistake, honest mistake. Sometimes people mistake us for a couple and that’s totally cool. Sometimes we just roll with it and it’s totally fine. We convinced Ezor we were gay for each other at the start and it was great! We got a real laugh out of it,” Hunk said, and Lance actually did laugh at that. When Hunk dropped his arms, Lance was as normal as he could be. 

They said goodbye once more, and Finn followed Hunk to the door and stayed there on the rug even after Hunk was gone. Lance spent several minutes standing there before the shock of mortification faded and left his chest aching with shame. It pulled at his eyes until the strain wrung out tears. “ _Fuck_ ,” he moaned, hands in his hair. “ _Fuck!_ Oh gods, what have I done,” he cried, reminded then that this wasn’t even _his life_. He was the reason the weather was so awful, and the reason why his counterpart’s best friend was going to wonder —after all this was over—whether or not Lance was in love with him.

Lance abandoned his cereal in favor of collapsing on the bed with a sob. He didn’t stop until Finnegan jumped on top of him and weaseled his way between Lance’s body and the cushions. He nuzzled his head under Lance’s arm, and stayed there as Lance forced out a laugh and decided hugging Finn would improve his mood for the day. He had until eleven to get his shit together.

_I have a date_ , he reminded himself. _I have a date. I have a date. I have a date_.

Before, it was just a hangout, but now? Now he didn’t have a boyfriend. He sat up abruptly, gasping. “I don’t have a boyfriend,” he said aloud, and flung himself off the couch screaming, “I have a shot! I have a shot with the assassin hottie!” He ran around the house screaming, and Finn chased him until he gave out at the throbbing in his head. He sat down against the counter laughing, holding his throbbing skull as Finn started barking at him and jumping around in the middle of the kitchen. 

For the remainder of the morning, Lance took Finn to the bedroom, sat him on the bed, and started rifling through the closet. He didn’t recognize any of the clothes and figured that if he was going to blow Keith away, he’d have to dress for the occasion. Still... he’ll have to somehow break the news that he was single... no harm in telling the truth there. Amnesia, mistaken romance, how breakups usually go...

Right, so perhaps breakups don’t usually fall under those categories, but it would make for an interesting conversation starter. And they didn’t know each other all that well, and Lance would have to explain it at some point once Keith started asking questions like “Where did you live before this?”

He was so thrilled that he was out the door by ten with Finn on a leash. There was a must in the air, so he popped open an umbrella once off the porch. The air was still warm, and not unpleasantly muggy, and so the walk to the boardwalk was comfortable and calm. There weren’t many tourists up and about as he passed the coffee shop he went to the day before. The shops were all open, though the beach was empty. He took to sitting on one of the benches and unclipped Finn’s leash so he could prance through the waves. 

He let his mind go blank for the thirty or so minutes it took for eleven o’ clock to roll around. Finnegan came back not long after running off, and laid beside him under the gloomy clouds. After a while, a shadow approached beside him on the other side of his umbrella, and he tipped it to find Keith leaning over to see if it was Lance hiding under there.

“Hey, nice to see you again,” Keith said, and said the same to Finn before gesturing to the bench. “Mind if I sit here?”

“No! Please, do,” Lance insisted, tipping his umbrella before bringing it back over to cover the both of them. 

“I hope you weren’t waiting long—”

“I didn’t have much to do today, so I’ve just been hanging out with Finn here,” he explained, gesturing to the dog. He passed the umbrella to Keith so that he could reach down and hook the leash back on. “Where were you planning on getting lunch?”

“Truthfully… I don’t know the area too well,” Keith confessed, “but there’s a restaurant near my hotel that seemed nice. And I saw a few dogs at the tables so Finn should be fine there.”

“Oh, yeah, Hunk says rich people bring their small dogs everywhere at the resort,” Lance said as he swung up to his feet with a laugh. “You know, the annoying little yipper-dogs—but, I mean, if you happened to have one that’s fine, because honestly I love all dogs.”

Thankfully, though, Keith laughed and reassured him that he didn’t. He was wearing simple clothes, and Lance was grateful that he didn’t go too overboard with his outfit—his counterpart had _plenty_ of fancy clothes in addition to grubby ones for work.

Keith stuck his hands in the pockets of his navy blue slacks and led the way down the boardwalk. He parked just up the road, with the hood of his convertible propped up. Keith walked up to the passenger door and held it for Lance and Finn, who sat between Lance’s legs perfectly without a care in the world. His paws were all sandy, though, and the instant Keith pulled the car away from the curb, Finn was lunging up on Lance’s lap and sticking his nose against the window. Lance was just as startled as Keith, and the two of them began laughing before they could help it. 

Lance looked at Keith just long enough to hope it wasn’t considered staring. He turned away, biting his lip at the thought of just about everything to do with Keith. He distracted himself before those fantasies could get too out of hand. 

He cleared his throat.

“So, um, I’m going to be honest and say I don’t know where the hell we’re going.”

“That’s fine—that’s what GPS is for,” Keith said, tapping the navigation screen on the car dashboard. 

“No, really—I’ve probably lived in this town for an entire year and now it’s like I don’t know where anything is,” he said, holding Finn close so that the pup wouldn’t try and leap through the window. “Something happened a few weeks ago and I… lost a _lot_ of my memory. Basically all of it, except, you know, things like _eating_ and _writing_ and—you know what I mean, right?” 

He turned to Keith, who just seemed curious rather than appalled. He took that as a good sign—at least Keith wasn’t kicking him out of the car for saying it. “So I just—I don’t want you to be alarmed when I don’t know where shit is. I know I said I live around here and I even _work_ at the resort but I just don’t remember any of it. Hunk’s been helping me get back on my feet, but it’s been… difficult adjusting.”

They pulled onto the country road that connected Lance’s town to the resort. It was a short, hilly drive that skirted the mountains, and it didn’t take long before Lance could see the hotels rising up among the pine trees. The brick sidewalks. The water fountains and sculptures. Lance’s story broke off to stare, and his awe was easily picked up by Keith.

“I’m guessing you haven’t been back to Altea since the accident,” he commented, and Lance shook his head, breathless. “What happened? How did the concussion...”

“Oh! Um... well, it’s kind of a ridiculous story...” he confessed, stuck by the vivid memory of falling from the rocky cliff. Half-naked.

“We’ve got time—I’m just gonna park in the hotel lot. Otherwise the meters are horrendous. I may own a convertible, but I am not paying to park elsewhere,” Keith said, and Lance laughed at called him frugal. “With that sort of stuff, yes, but for you...”

Lance raised a mocking eyebrow at him, and Keith gave him a flat look. “Don’t even look at the prices on the menu. They’ll give you a headache if you do.”

“Will they really?” Lance said, and his surprise hung around as they got out of the car. Everything echoed against the garage’s concrete walls. “I didn’t really believe Hunk when he said Altea was for rich people.”

“I don’t know—I haven’t really explored all that much,” Keith confessed. “I was waiting for you to give me a tour, but... now we can just figure it out together.”

Lance stared until realizing that he was probably being rude. Keith laughed as Lance looked down, having the good sense to blush like mad. He tucked his fingers against his lips and spared one last glance at Keith as they emerged from the parking garage and into the dim grey of the afternoon. Keith took the umbrella from him so that he could focus on keeping Finn on track, and together they walked side by side down the brick paths cutting between restaurants and hotels, expensive boutiques and spas.

They got distracted before they could even reach the restaurant. Lance was caught by the sight of a leather jacket in a storefront window, and so they wandered inside to investigate. The snobby retail worker eyed Finn, and Finn eyed her back as Keith tipped the price tag towards Lance. He almost passed out at the sight. No wonder the jacket was chained to the goddamn rack.

They left without buying a thing, and the retail worker seemed relieved to see them go with Finn on their heels.

“I work at this hiking facility, apparently. I mean, according to Hunk, anyways,” Lance said.

“That sounds skeptical.”

“It’s not that I don’t _believe him_ , it’s just... I’m kind of scared to go back. I don’t remember anything and apparently I used to, like, be a nature expert or something. But I don’t know anything about plant biology now! So long, everything from high school,” Lance said with a theatrical wave. “And I feel bad because one of my coworkers is a good friend, but I haven’t seen her yet. She sounds... overwhelming.”

“You shouldn’t be forced to hang out with people just because you used to before,” Keith said, and Lance frowned thoughtfully. 

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. She’s been texting me updates and stuff, so that’s kind of sweet,” Lance said, and thought to check his phone then. He hadn’t responded to... _anyone_ , really. “Have you ever had a concussion before?”

“No—What’s it like?”

“Like... someone’s got my brain in a vice, and they crank it every time I look at something bright. Like my phone, or the sky...” he said, and hesitated on the bricks to squint at the phone screen. He put it away and followed Finn’s lead where Keith was pointing to the restaurant patio railing. 

Thankfully, Keith was right: Finnegan Skybarker was accepted into the restaurant, and was even given a bowl of water and a treat. As they settled in at their window table, the waitress brought glasses of water over, two menus, and an alcohol menu. Keith passed on the alcohol (unbeknownst to Lance, the alcohol wouldn’t affect him one bit). Lance, on the other hand...

“I’ve never gotten drunk before,” he said, flipping the menu over. “Do you think I’m able to? With a concussion and all?”

“I don’t know, maybe you shouldn’t push it—“

“Oh come on, it’d be fun! Let’s try it,” Lance said. When the waitress came by again, Lance asked for something sweet, and he was served a fruity, icy drink in an elegant crystal glass. The aftertaste had his toes curling, and he couldn’t finish half of it. He gave the rest to Finn. “ _Bleh_ , I don’t like alcohol.”

“Valiant effort,” Keith said, and picked up the glass before the waitress could catch them getting their dog drunk. 

Lance stuck his hand into his coat pockets and weaseled out his pill container. Hunk left a note on the counter with instructions, and so Lance washed down the pills with water and capped the container. “I made the mistake once of chewing a pill—worst mistake of my life as far as I could tell,” Lance said.

“Biggest mistake? Wow.”

“I know! But then again there’s the time this whole shitshow happened,” Lance said, gesturing to his head. “Speaking of! Story time! It was, like, one in the morning and Hunk and I went out with these two girls to these cliffs on the edge of the Sound, you know? And we were being stupid and went skinny dipping—“

“Skinny dipping? What’s that?” Keith asked, and so Lance had the pleasure of explaining that they were all naked at the time. Keith stared at him, but didn’t seem _appalled,_ so Lance went on to describe the meteor shower, and how Hunk claims one of them hit him and knocked him off the cliff, but really, Lance couldn’t remember the strike.

“I had this wildly vivid dream of it last night. I woke up in a cold sweat and all that stuff. Apparently that’s gonna happen once in a while until all my memories come back,” Lance explained. “That was one of the firsts, I don’t remember if it’s happened before then... the past few days have been a blur...”

Lance paused to look up at Keith, whose hair was tied back all except for the few baby hairs that fell over his forehead. His skin was so clear and smooth it looked almost fake, and Lance wondered about his chances of finding pictures of Keith in the magazine section at one of the grocery stores at the resort. 

They watched one another in silence until the waitress came up to take their order. Lance didn’t get a chance to even read his menu, let alone decide, and so Keith ordered for them (little did Lance know, Keith went to the restaurant earlier that day to make sure it would have something Lance liked, just based on everything Keith knew Lance ate back in the Underworld). The waitress took their menus then, and the empty glass that Finn was still licking his teeth at.

“There’s… actually something I want to talk to you about,” Lance said, and winced. “That sounds serious. Oh, gods, and we barely know each other!”

Keith laughed, and his smile did wonders to Lance’s anxiety over the subject. It reassured him that Keith was happy to be around Lance, and so there was still a shot, even if Keith assumed that Lance was dating Hunk. _Just say it_ , Lance urged himself.

“I, um…” Lance started, and turned red with humiliation all over again. “Gosh, this is so embarrassing. I’m sorry—”

“What is it?” Keith prompted, flatting his napkin over his lap as Lance peeked at him from between his fingers. 

“Fine,” he huffed, looking away as he said, “We know I don’t remember much, right? And all I’ve got is Hunk, and… we’ve been friends since we were in _diapers_ or whatever. My entire room is filled with pictures of the two of us, and… I assumed we were dating. Like, there’s pictures of us kissing each other on the cheek and everything! We even went to _Homecoming_ together, apparently. Like, what about that says ‘straight’ or whatever?”

“Sure…” Keith said, tipping his head adorably as he tried to piece together what Lance was saying. His eyes widened, and he said, “Oh. _Oh_ , you aren’t—Fuck, Lance, you thought you were dating Hunk and you aren’t—”

“I feel so awful!” Lance cried out, slapping his hands over his face again. He shook his head, saying, “I just found out today that it’s not the case! It was so awkward, I feel so bad—”

“Lance—”

“And he’s such a nice guy too! And I go and, like—Anyone would have a crush on Hunk, he’s so nice and cute, so I guess that makes sense, but—”

“Lance—”

“You probably think I’m insane. I mean, it’s not every day you meet a guy who doesn't remember the first twenty-some years of his life, you know what I mean?” he said, and at that point, the waitress put a basket of bread on the table and he started digging in. He was halfway through his first piece as Keith simply watched in bewilderment as Lance went on and on in great detail about the look on Hunk’s face when Lance kissed him on the cheek. 

Keith listened eagerly through all of it, though his mind was reeling from the news. Lance wouldn’t have mentioned it if he wasn’t _interested in Keith_. Pretending he was taken was the ultimate way to keep Keith from stepping into romantic boundaries. Lance was encouraging him to proceed with this, and Keith was completely on board.

“You probably think this is all really insane, don’t you?” Lance said, and the way he grimaced had Keith’s chest aching. He wasn’t used to this. He wasn’t used to Lance’s uncertainty— _especially_ any insecurities about _Keith_. Lance talked about everything, from events to feelings to the history of everything to do with his father and siblings (those that he was closed to, anyways). When he addressed Keith… even at the start, he was unreserved. He treated their relationship as if it had always been a “thing,” like showing up in the orchard and sparking a romance was _predestined_.

“No, definitely not. I’ve heard weirder things, trust me,” Keith insisted, shaking his head with a smile.

“Really? Like what?” Lance asked. “What about your life makes things like this seem ‘not weird,’ or whatever?”

Keith laughed, thinking about everything he _could_ say, and then everything he and Acxa planned. “Actually, you’re probably going to think I’m insane for even being here right now,” he said, and paused as the waitress came to drop off their food. She walked off with a smile, and Keith hesitated to see the hunger shine in Lance’s eyes as he stared at all the food. _Now he has an actual appetite_ , Keith mused to himself. Lance wasn’t just indulging anymore, and he wondered how great food tasted when he was hungry. He never would have a reason to know.

“Try me,” Lance said with a wink and took the first bite of his sandwich. “ _Gods_ , this is so damn _good_.”

“Really?”

“Here, try,” Lance insisted, reaching one of the sandwich halves across to Keith. Keith picked it up and took a small bite. He never really appreciated the lesser things in life like food, but he decided to _indulge_ , just this once, for Lance’s sake. “You were saying, though?”

“Oh, it’s just that I’m not here alone,” he said, and Lance looked up then to stare. “I’m… actually on my _honeymoon_ , if that’s what you want to call it. I married my best friend for the sake of my parents getting off my back. They don’t approve of their son loving men.”

“Oh,” Lance hummed. “I’m sorry… I—You aren’t even wearing a wedding ring—” Lance’s brow tensed, shoulders slumping as he looked for anything, even a tan line where a ring might have been. There weren’t any.

“We don’t wear them unless we’re around family,” Keith reassured him. “She’s probably off flirting with the boutique workers, not gonna lie.”

“So she’s…”

“Also playing for the team neither of our parents approve of,” he finished, and Lance donned a thoughtful expression as he turned to look out the window. “This was the better alternative, I guess. I want to… take over my father’s company one day, and I can’t do that if he disowns me.” _More or less true_ , Keith thought to himself as Lance resumed eating. 

“And… your friend…?”

“She never thought about marrying anyone, and it’s not _really_ marriage for us. We love each other, but not in the romantic sense. Just friends,” he said. “I hope that… doesn’t bother you? You could meet her, if you’d like—ask her about it yourself?”

“For all I know, you’re just saying this to try and sleep with me,” Lance said, and when Keith didn’t say anything, Lance scoffed and said, “I was joking. I trust you.”

“Are you sure, because I understand if you—”

“Keith, seriously? Any guy with slacks as tight as yours has to be gay,” Lance said, and as Keith looked down at his pants, Lance went on eating. “I’m glad to know we’re both in peculiar situations. Cheers!” Lance tipped his water glass against Keith’s.

Halfway through their meal, rain started to pour in earnest out beyond the patio umbrellas. Finn nestled underneath the table closest to the open window where he could settle his nose on the ledge and pant heavily against it. Lance loved how eagerly Keith seemed to listen—full attention, eyes on him, silently asking for _more_. So, Lance kept talking, and talking, and talking, until the bill arrived and Keith sent it away with a credit card. 

“So how long are you and your friend here for?” Lance asked. “What’s her name, anyway?”

_Don’t worry about suspicion_ , Keith told himself. If it came to that, if Lance even _remembered_ , it’d be easy to play it off as Acxa being her counterpart. The chances were slim, but not impossible, for Lance to meet another gods’ counterpart in the mortal world. 

“We haven’t decided on a date to leave. Her name is Acxa,” he said, and absently sipped on his drink as he waited for some sort of recognition to flirt across Lance’s face. Lance hummed, though, and said that he hoped Keith would stick around longer than expected. “I hope so as well,” he replied, and smiled again. He was smiling so much today that it was starting to strain his cheeks.

They watched the rain for a while longer before deciding they better give up their table for another couple. Finnegan was just as tame as ever until a table asked to pet him, in which case he flew into a flurry of excitement. He started wiggling so hard his bum whacked a chair and he started barking. The table all laughed as Lance tried to calm him down, but petting Finn just made him squirm more. 

“He’s always had this sort of energy. He isn’t even much of a puppy anymore,” Lance told them, but they were charmed by how uncoordinated Finn was.

Eventually, they left, but it took ages for Finn to get past the eager hostesses cooing over him. Keith propped open Lance’s umbrella and waited beneath the canopy for Lance to herd Finnegan out the door. They started towards the brick walkway when Keith said, practically shouting over the rain:

“Would you want to meet Acxa?”

“What? Right now?”

“Yeah, right now!” he said, and Lance laughed. “Would you want to?”

“Uh, yeah! Yeah, definitely! Where?”

“Just in our room.”

Lance’s insides buzzed at the idea. He couldn’t form coherent words, and so he simply nodded eagerly. He felt like how Finn looked when all those strangers started petting him and showing him attention. Only, this time, Lance was being offered a glimpse into Keith’s life from the vantage point of _Keith’s hotel room_. Lance had to be dreaming, he had to be, because how else would all of his fantasies be coming true? The next thing he knew, Keith was going to tell him that the industry his father owned happened to be a _ninja house_ or something. 

So, Keith turned them around the restaurant’s patio railing and to the hotel lobby entrance. He shook out the umbrella as his foot held open the door for Lance and Finn. Lance started shivering before he could help himself, and Keith asked if he was cold, but he wasn’t—he was just _so fucking excited_. 

Lance held Finn to his chest in the elevator as they went up. Truthfully, his imagination was running wild, and he wondered if he’d always been this crazy with his crushes. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to happen, but anything would have been fine at that point. Keith could offer him a drink and watch movies with and Lance would have been just as fine as if Keith offered sex instead. They could just stop by to talk to Acxa and leave, and he’d be fine with it. 

Keith’s flannel sleeves were a bit damp from the rain as he led the way down the hallway. Lance continued to hold Finn to him, perhaps to keep himself from vibrating so hard he’d vault through the ceiling.

“Just over here.”

“‘Kay,” Lance said, giddy with anticipation as Keith swiped his key card and pushed the door open. 

Keith called out Acxa’s name as he held the door open for Lance. Lance hesitated a moment before letting out a reassuring sigh, thinking, _Now or never,_ as he shifted over the threshold and let the door close behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I recently got a kofi page to sorta... balance out college vs work vs writing :D [You can find the link on my tumblr](http://girlskylark.tumblr.com/) if you're interested!


	9. the forest

Lance stood in the hotel room kitchen for several minutes simply staring and listening to Acxa and Keith talk, feeling as though he was on another plane of existence. There was no way anyone as beautiful as Keith would show interest in _him,_ Lance, when he had someone like _her_ , Acxa. 

_I mean, even if the guy’s gay you have to admit that Acxa’s one fine specimen_ , Lance thought to himself as someone said something that seemed to be directed at the general group, but Lance was too busy staring to realize it.

Keith waved a hand at Lance. “Hey, you okay? I just asked if you wanted something, but you were zoning there for a second.”

“Oh!” Lance squeaked, turning pink at the ears as Acxa smiled at him. She was Asian as well, and it was just now occurring to Lance that he had a type. Her soft white eyelids were painted over in gold eyeshadow, matching the glint of golden studs that framed her ears. “I, um, what do you mean?”

“Are you feeling okay? How’s your head?” Keith asked, reaching over to touch his hand to Lance’s forehead. 

_Gods_ , he thought he was going to faint. _All I want is to initiate an orgy with you two or something, but I am_ definitely _not equipped to deal with that sort of stimulation right now_ , he panted internally, wishing he could fan himself as he watched Acxa reach up into one of the cabinets to fetch crystalline glasses for the three of them.

“I’m fine,” he squeaked. “I just… I need to sit down for a moment. Sorry—”

“Don’t be sorry,” Keith said. “I didn’t realize… Now that I think of it we’ve already had a pretty full day walking around and shit. You must be tired, maybe I should take you back—”

“No! No, this is fine. And I really wanted to meet Acxa,” he insisted, and earned a flattered “Aw!” from her as she handed him some water. 

“Nice to meet you, too,” she said, and _fuck_ , her voice was perfection.

Lance blinked again, having a hard time grasping any of this. He cleared his throat and took a moment to compose his thoughts before saying, “Look, this is gonna sound weird or whatever, but, like—no hetero— _wow_ , you’re gorgeous.”

Acxa snorted and burst into laughter. “That’s so sweet!” she said, and before Lance could even think to smile, she was engulfing him in a hug. He turned pink and leaned into it, squeezing her around the torso and holding on even as she dropped her arms. 

“Can I just stay here,” Lance whispered against her shoulder, blinking owlishly at Keith. Keith looked irritated at best, and Lance hoped it was jokingly. 

Acxa pat his hair, and grazed her fingers over the shaven bit where his stitches used to be. “So that whole concussion thing must’ve been a huge deal, huh?” she commented.

“Oh yeah,” he hummed, resting his cheek on her shoulder as she pet his head in much the same way she did with Finnegan Skybarker earlier.

“With the way things are, I’d say you like Acxa more than me,” Keith commented. When Lance lifted his eyelids to look, Keith was raising his eyebrows, jaw tense.

“Then get over here. I’m all about the hugs,” Lance said. “If Acxa is, anyways. I forgot to ask.”

“I love hugs,” she said, and backtracked a moment later. “I mean, most of the time no, but I love your hugs.”

“I don’t know if we’re on hugging terms,” Keith said.

“Of course we are,” Lance said, smiling sleepily at him before closing his eyes. He heard Keith push back the stool from the counter. His footsteps approached the two of them, and hesitated a foot away with his arms out, eyebrow quirked to Acxa.

“Stop looking so cheeky and get over here,” Acxa laughed. “My arm is getting tired.”

“Fine,” Keith huffed, and wrapped himself around Lance from behind, his arms going around Acxa’s shoulders so that Lance’s cheek pressed to his bicep, and every part of him was humming in pure comfort. 

For a moment… just a small, fleeting minute of the day, Lance felt peaceful for the first time since he could remember. Even in his memories of the Sound, he was in constant motion—frigid, looking for warmth—or sat at the living room couch with Finn and Hunk—curious, looking for answers—nothing was quiet as calm as that time he was sandwiched between two absolute strangers in a foreign, _expensive_ hotel room.

He breathed in the feeling, absorbed it, and let it fade before saying, “I get this weird feeling… like I’ve known you guys for _ages_. I can’t explain why.”

Lance yawned as Acxa ruffled his hair once more and dropped her arms. Keith’s hands came to rest on Lance back as he twisted around to nestle his forehead against Keith’s shoulder. “Sorry for being so weird… I get sleepy easily…” he said tiredly. “And sometimes the drugs make me woozy.”

“It’s fine, Lance,” Keith said, voice hushed. “Maybe I should take you back.”

“Will we hang out again?”

“Of course. When would you like?”

“Tomorrow.” He heard Acxa scoff from the kitchen. “I should show you guys where I work. I mean, I don’t remember where… but maybe Hunk could take us? Hunk’s my roommate,” he clarified for Acxa.

“Roommate, huh?” she commented, raising an eyebrow at Keith. Lance looked up to find Keith glaring sourly at her. “Sure, I’d be down.”

They settled on a time for Keith and Acxa to pick Lance up. Acxa was so thrilled to have Finn’s attention that she walked him to the parking garage with Keith and Lance trailing behind. While she ran around the concrete with Finn chasing after her, Keith let Lance tip his head against his own. 

Keith was grateful that touchy-feely Lance hadn’t changed a bit. He wasn’t sure if he could stand hours holding himself back from Lance’s hand waiting to have someone hold it. So, he took advantage of the moment of close proximity, and watched Acxa chase Finn around the parking garage. Finn’s barks were echoing noisily across the walls, and Lance laughed at the sight of Finn getting all worked up.

It was different for Keith, though, and he knew this. He couldn’t stop himself from feeling guilty, like he was cheating. Here was Lance, meeting Keith for the first time, worrying over first-date nerves while Keith was occasionally swept away with the fantasies of Lance in his bed back in the Underworld, completely unclothed. He could still feel the soft, gentle skin of Lance’s thighs underneath his fingers in the place of Lance’s fingers linked between his own. Lance smiled up at him, the yellow garage lights merging with the shadows of rain water flitting out beyond the exit.

“Are you okay with this?” he asked. “I don’t really… know what I’m doing…”

Keith blinked, but he couldn’t stop picturing Lance in a silk robe. Lance, with his reddened lips and rough, sexy voice breathing in his ear, “ _I love every part of you—_ ”

“I don’t care,” Keith said, swallowing hard as he shook his head. “I just want to spend more time with you.”

Lance’s smile was everything Keith was looking for. He opened the passenger door for Lance as Acxa returned with Finn on her heels. Finn lunged in after Lance, panting hard as he settled between Lance’s legs and stared up at Acxa through the window. 

Keith walked around to the other side of the car as Acxa followed him, whispering so as not to be overheard, “So… his boyfriend then?” 

“He mistook the signs,” Keith said, and smirked at her from over the open driver’s door. “And you said you didn’t have faith in this.”

“Oh, come on,” she laughed. “ _No one_ could have predicted that— _Keith!_ Don’t flip me off!” 

Keith laughed as he dropped into the driver’s seat and shut the door behind him. Acxa stepped back to avoid being run over, and made sure to flip them off when he turned the headlights onto her. Lance waved amicably back, and beamed at Keith as he said, “I like her! Do you think she likes me?”

_She’s always liked you_. “Definitely,” Keith said, and pulled the car out into the rain.

 

. . .

 

Keith rarely bothered to investigate sparks of energy here and there on his estate. Most of the time, it was just Acxa, or Takashi. Not many gods could pass through the Underworld anyhow, and his father never bothered to visit, so there could only be so many people passing through.

It made life lonely, yes, but Keith had to deal with plenty of ghosts being acclimated to their new life in the Forests. Just as Keith could remember the first human to ripen on the trees, he could remember sending them off towards the mountains where they’d pass through the barrier into Takashi’s realm. That was back when death was new, and few people experienced it until they were older. They tended to come in pairs—a woman gone from illness, and her husband following shortly after from old age—but soon there were dozens at a time. Wars happened. New nodes showed at the roots and grew up through the bark in the shapes of faces and shoulders, arms and legs, before the figure pushed through the surface and fell out among the brittle grass. 

There were too many to keep track of now, and so Keith’s workers were assigned with finding the newcomers and pressing their destination into their foreheads. It glowed red beneath the fleshy layer over their skulls, and only faded after they passed through Takashi’s barrier. For a while, Keith used to follow them as far as he could, and watched them disappear quietly through a mirrored wall. After the surface ripples over them and settled, all that was left was a ghostly reflection of Keith staring after them. He looked like a child back then. 

He looked sorrowful, stuck in his youth while he transported aged souls to his brother’s realm. They all left for the comfort of Takashi’s world at one time or another. Keith was lonely at first, desperate for contact, and after the first several transports, he clung to the hand of a fresh soul and tried to make them stay.

They never talked much, especially after Keith gave them direction, so Keith tried to simply... never offer that sort of guidance. He never knew the torment they went through at the time—they never spoke, and perhaps they couldn’t, in their primitive state, but they were overcome with confusion. Discomfort. They’d stand and stare out past the gates of Keith’s estate until he grew tired of watching them pine for something else. He laid his thumb on their forehead, and sent them off with a sense of belonging waiting beyond the mountains.

His directions separated the souls from their sorrows in the past. Any mental ailments they suffered vanished, and the mirror barrier sealed their comfort. They would suffer no longer in Takashi’s realm. In Keith’s realm, they would realize how they died and why, and all of the people they left behind. He couldn’t do that to him, so he accepted his fate as the lonelier of the two sons of Zarkon.

He didn’t focus much anymore on when new souls arrived. If he did, his skin would constantly be prickling with goosebumps—that was how he used to tell when he needed to show a wayward soul their way back in the day. Now, he let his workers deal with it, so imagine his surprise when he got a wave of goosebumps just from a shock of energy in the Forests.

_Definitely_ not a soul.

He turned around from where he’d been investigating his bookshelf for a missing novel. He squinted at the dark outside his window, and moved away from his study to search for the shudder in the air. It continued to ripple across his skin like a thin, silky fabric. It was transparent, barely recognizable in comparison to the obvious sensations Takashi and Acxa gave off. 

This was… different.

At the time, Keith assumed it was his father sending one of his lesser assistants to inform him of this-or-that, but as he searched the Forests, he decided that this person wasn’t abrupt and bold like a messenger from his father would be. They wouldn’t be hiding in the shadows…

He had been focusing on his mental map of the Forest when he heard it—a gentle, rhythmic humming. He followed the sound of it before he started to make out… 

Was someone _singing?_ Who [_sang_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUw1e7vvSRY) in the Underworld?

“ _—you standing in the shadows and your eyes were blue… You put your hand out… Open the door…_ ”

By this point, Keith was simply annoyed that he was drawn all the way out here to listen to some demented soul _sing_. Clearly, it seemed, one of his workers was getting lazy when it came to catching the souls before they went wandering and lost their minds.

But, then Keith followed the sight of two slender legs swinging from a tree branch—clearly solid, and glowing with the sort of unrestrained power gods tended to give off. This stranger’s aura was golden, and Keith was momentarily stunned by the fact that a strange god was lingering around in _his_ territory. 

“ _Black skies changed into blue, and my love is so wise and so pretty but tonight I still dream of you…_ ” 

Keith stepped out from around the wide, white bark of a tree trunk. He could see now how the man was picking bark off of a soul’s face, exposing their human flesh to the air.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Keith said, crossing his arms as the man shrieked and would have fallen, and his hands not caught on the branches. He swung and stuck the landing, if only he hadn’t landed mere inches from Keith’s face.

Keith didn’t even flinch. “How did you get in here,” he demanded.

The man had the unmistakable charm and appearance of a certain _someone_ who his father only spoke of in scorn. Another son of Alfor, it seemed, but it didn’t explain how the man got here in the first place. 

“I just walked in,” he said, which didn’t make any sense, so Keith didn’t push it.

“You can’t help the souls get out,” Keith told him instead, walking up to the branch the man had been sitting on. He picked up a layer of bark from the ground and slipped it over the soul’s face once more. It sealed the person’s eye from view once more. “That’s basic knowledge.”

“How do they get out then?” the man demanded, stepping up to the tree again to rip the bark off. Keith waved a hand over the soul’s face without bothering to pick up the bark. The tree regrew over the face.

The man’s gentle eyes hardened, glaring at Keith as he asked, “Do you realize where you are?”

Keith watched as the man stuck his nose in the air, and paused before saying, “Yes, I do.”

“No you don’t,” he sighed. “I can’t let strangers walk through here, especially gods.”

“As if I could do any harm,” the man said, laughing as he followed Keith on his way back to the path.

“Anyone could do harm if they managed to get in here. This is the Forest.”

“The Forest?” he repeated, and his shock showed through. “You mean the Underworld? Incredible! It’s so _beautiful!_ I always wondered…”

The man’s voice faded away behind Keith, so Keithdid what he was supposed to do when it came to intruders. There weren’t many that Keith had to deal with, and so it was thrilling being able to straighten the bracelet his father gave him for the first time. 

He stood for a moment, waiting for the man to catch up before tapping the black gem attached to the golden band. The intruder dissolved into a cloud of black smoke mid-sentence, and spiraled around Keith’s arm before sinking into the opaque black gem. It was certainly an easy transport, especially for an intruder.

Keith started back for his estate where he walked up to the shadows of the brick fencing and disappeared through it. He emerged on the other side, too lazy to bother walking to the gated entrance, and started for his foyer. It had many of the same features as any other foyer he’d find throughout the Underworld, only, his was implemented with portals specific to his status. They were each covered in thick velvet curtains, and Keith walked up to the black one and ripped it to the side. The dust shifted on it, and was flung to the side in a cloud of it as he tapped his bracelet gem again.

A fog left the gem and fell onto the ground where the man reappeared, coughing up smoke.

“No! Wait, wait—” he cried, and the desperation in his voice had Keith hesitating.

_No, you know the risks of intruders_ , he told himself.

“Where do you come from? Homerealm?” Keith demanded as the man got to his knees on the mural tiles of Keith’s foyer. 

He clasped his hands together, brows tented into a tense line of misery as he quickly looked down, staring at the floor with his hands up. “Please, don’t send me back there. Please…”

“You’re one of Alfor’s kids,” Keith commented. It wasn’t an insult, but it might as well be, considering the man’s reaction to it. He slumped forward on the tiles, hands dropping to the ground. “What’s your name?”

“Lance. My name’s Lance,” he said. The skin around his eyes was pink as he looked up at Keith. “You… You must be Zarkon’s youngest son, then. Kogane?”

“Yes,” he said, and after a moment of staring between the portal and Lance, he yanked the curtain closed. 

“What’s your common name?” he asked, and Keith gave a snort in reply, turning to walk away. “Wait, what are you going to do with me?”

“I don’t know. Do whatever you like—I’m interested to see what you came here for,” Keith confessed. At the archway, Keith turned in the shadow of one of the sculptures mounted on a platform above. Lance was still on his knees, staring at Keith in amazement. Keith turned to the side, wondering why the sight had his insides fluttering. “But don’t be mistaken—I know everything that happens in the Forests. I can feel it if you try and tear the bark off of my souls. I can do worse than trap you in a bracelet.”

“Of course—I won’t—I promise I won’t cause you trouble,” Lance said, and lowered his head again to bow. “Thank you. Thank you so much, you don’t know what this means to me.”

“No, I’m sure I don’t,” Keith huffed, and turned away to leave.

He was intrigued, though. It was difficult to forget the fact that a foreign god—albeit, a lesser god—was lingering in his foyer. He had the distinct urge to follow this _Lance_ around, but instead, he allowed himself to be followed. It didn’t take long for Keith to pick up on the fact that Lance was slowly moving through the house. He could hear the man’s soft footsteps, muffled by his cloth-soled slippers, stepping after Keith. 

Keith wandered into his study, reminded of what he was doing before he was hopelessly distracted. He couldn’t quite focus on anything aside from Lance’s shadow passing around the corner, casting on the narrow stone hallway outside of Keith’s study. Refusing to look, Keith turned his eyes to the bookcase, picking up the book he laid on a table, and searched for its designated home.

Lance came to stand quietly in the threshold. He watched Keith stare at the bindings, and then as Keith returned the book to its shelf, and then picked out a new one. He had wide, _wide_ blue eyes that followed Keith wherever he went. 

Keith wasn’t used to the attention.

He never had anyone to watch over him, not even when he was a child, and it took him days to realize it, but he had insecurities. He started touching his neck more often than not. He stroked the scars with his fingers as he pored over his work, and hoped desperately that Lance was ignorant and young enough not to know the story of them. Much to his displeasure, he started twisting his fingers through his hair and imagined he looked a helluva lot like a innocent school girl when he did it. Takashi always told him to cut it. He wondered if he looked disheveled at all. He never cared about the maintenance of his physical form until now—he never really needed to—but now he was starting to wonder if he _should_ be showering, or changing his clothes… 

He probably made an awful housemate, but Lance never said anything about it. 

Lance never said… much at all after that first day. Keith seemed to make himself clear enough that if Lance stepped out of line, he’d kick Lance back to Homerealm. Truthfully, it was an empty threat. He could do so much more than send Lance to Homerealm. There were certainly other destinations—a distant island in the infinite suspense of time and space. To Zarkon’s dungeons. 

But… he figured Lance was still testing his boundaries. He waited for Lance to say something, but the man continued to linger on the outskirts of every room, staring from beyond rows of trees, lingering around the workers out in the Forest who made themselves known just to stare at Lance likewise.

Keith would look during those times, and watch Lance and the workers approach one another like they were seeing each other through a mirror. They’d reach a hand on—Lance’s, brown and gentle, while Keith’s workers raised clawed fingers with low thumb knuckles. The instant Lance would touch their fingers, they’d fly off, swinging between branches to evade Lance’s laughter.

When Lance would turn back to Keith, Keith would be busy with something else.

The day came when Lance made contact with Keith again, but it took a week or so, and by then Keith was certain his silence was irking Lance. He could tell just from the number of times Lance inhaled to speak, and thought twice about it, that Lance was an adamant talker back in Homerealm. Keith was thrilled to hear what Lance wanted to say during those times, but decided to wait until Lance was ready to talk.

Keith never kept track of the days based on sunlight—there wasn’t much sunlight where he lived—but there were resting periods, and there were working periods, and that was what made up his days. After he spent a while resting, reading from his study, he left towards the foyer where he found Lance waiting for him.

Lance pointed to the curtain. “What’s this?” he asked.

Neither one of them had been talking, and so Lance’s voice seemed deafeningly loud in comparison to everything else. Keith blinked in surprise, and recovered as Lance pulled his hand back in, looking like he was about ready to take back his question.

“A shadow portal,” Keith said at last. 

“Where does it go?”

“This one goes wherever I ask it, outside of the Underworld.”

Lance moved to a red curtain.

“Anywhere in the Underworld I choose, outside of my own territory.”

“Then what about that one over there?” he asked. It was a deep, charcoal grey curtain, partially obstructed by a set of Keith’s sculptures. 

“My father’s dungeons. Not many people are allowed in or out of it, and so there are very few entrances. If we went through, I’d have to escort you, otherwise you’d either be spat back out here, or stuck in the portal,” Keith said.

Lance recoiled his arm back, and Keith found himself laughing. “I don’t use it. It’s why I’ve put my guards in front of it, to keep people from going through.”

“Guards?” Lance repeated, looking around the sculptures in search of them.

“Those are the guards. My father gave me a few souls to keep with me—warriors from the mortal realm who worshiped Zarkon and earned their place,” Keith explained. 

“ _What?_ That’s so cool!” Lance cried, hands on one of the sculptures arms. “What are their names?”

And, so, Keith walked Lance through the estate, naming off each of the sculptures. Afterwards, Lance abandoned Keith in favor of walking through and introducing himself to the clusters of the guards. Later that day, Keith looked down from the balcony, overhearing Lance’s flurry of laughter as he tried explaining a story about this-or-that back on Homerealm. None of the guards spoke back, but they were listening—Keith knew as much—and he could tell that they loved Lance’s company.

After Lance finished his first round of chats, he came to find Keith as if nothing had happened and said, “Are your days always like this?”

Keith looked up from his book with a curious look, and Lance took his attention as the opportunity to sit beside him on the couch. It wasn’t a _huge_ couch, by any means, and so they sat with their hips touching and shoulders grazing each other.

“What are you reading? It looks like… charts…”

“They’re accounts of all the souls that have ripened,” he said, and Lance scoffed at the term. “What, don’t you agree they grow like fruit?”

“Well, yes, but they’re _people_. We can’t eat them,” Lance giggled, and Keith found himself smiling. “Did you write that all?”

“Not technically,” he said. “I used to write them all by hand, but the books keep a record of my handwriting and write the records themselves now. So it looks as though I wrote it. It’s all boring work and would take years just for me to keep up. This shortens the work.”

“Ah. Can I see?” he asked.

Keith handed him the book, and Lance skipped straight to the end where the pages were blank. He searched for the last logging, and waiting patiently for the book to fill in the next. It was halfway through recording the time of death and calculating the time of spiritual maturity—between the time of death, and the time they were fully ripened on the trees. Keith explained all this, and Lance was in amazement.

“Would you like to see this one?” Keith asked. “They likely just fell from the tree. The workers haven’t gotten to them yet.”

“Yes, please,” Lance said eagerly.

Keith set the book aside and pulled Lance up by the hand. They walked to the corridor where the shadows enveloped them, and Keith pushed a hand through a wall, turning it into a black puddle through which they walked. 

Lance clutched hold of Keith’s cloak and chest-plate. Keith rolled his eyes as he guided Lance through the dense blackness, seeing clearly how Lance couldn’t see one bit. He didn’t look frightened, just curious, and his heartbeat elevated with the excitement of exploring the unknown.

Keith’s feet grounded themselves, and he pulled Lance after him. They emerged through a puddle in the Forest, not far from the lost soul wandering the path. Lance staggered, tripping into Keith with a shout. Keith caught him, steadying him with both hands on Lance’s shoulders. He turned Lance around, marching him forward between the trees. 

There, not far from them, stretched the shadow of a wayward soul lingering among the spindly branches. They were in a daze, half-asleep, and blinked slowly at them through deep brown eyes. Lance hesitated, suddenly made aware that it wasn’t just them in this forest—humans were all around them, despite being obstructed by tree-bark. They were still there, watching, at all times. Lance stayed where he was, even as Keith approached the human with one slender white hand outstretched.

Instinct seemed to draw the human’s hand towards him, accepting it. Lance marveled at the action, like a gentleman taking a lady’s hand for a dance. Instead of dancing, though, Keith coaxed the mortal closer to Lance.

“Oh! Oh, gods, no, I’m good,” Lance squeaked, waving his hands.

“And here I thought you weren’t afraid of humans,” Keith commented, rolling his eyes stiffly. 

“I’m not afraid!” Lance cried indignantly. Keith raised an eyebrow at him, his porcelain complexion just perfect enough for Lance to blush at, unable to look away. “Really, I’m not! It’s just—well, can they… can they see me? And hear me?”

“Not particularly.”

“Then what are they doing here?”

“Waiting for guidance. Here—” Keith abandoned the mortal’s hand in favor of reaching for Lance’s. Something red was glowing between his fingers, and he conjured it to settle on Lance’s palm. He drew his fingers up the length of Lance’s thumb, and let it settle on the pad of his finger. “Place your thumb on their forehead. This is what all my workers do when it comes to taking care of the matured souls.”

Lance stepped forward, drawing his eyes away from Keith’s to face the mortal, waiting numbly on the Forest path. His fingers shook as he reached his hand farther from his own chest. He laid his thumb on the human’s forehead, and gasped when the light glowed brighter, sinking into the flesh and blooming like a rose beneath the surface. It spiraled, shimmering, and turned as the mortal faced away from them and started walking. 

“Where—What’re they doing?” Lance asked, startled as he started after the soul. “Where do they go?”

“Takashi—You might know him as Shirogane—has a realm just beyond the mountains. That’s where all souls live out their sentences once they’ve matured,” Keith explained, following farther behind as Lance walked alongside the mortal dressed in white robes. 

“Can we go there?” Lance asked.

He felt more than listened to Keith’s silence. He hadn’t realized that Keith picked up his pace—he couldn’t even hear Keith’s footsteps, not even when he hurried behind Lance and grabbed him by the arm, turning him away. 

“No, we can’t—especially not you,” he said sharply, turning Lance back down the path towards the estate. Lance looked over his shoulder at the soul departing. They dissolved into the fog as Lance was forced back to the path Keith led him down. He didn’t mind this so much.

“Have you been there?” Lance asked. “I won’t go there, not if you tell me what’s over there.”

“Cities. Millions of them,” Keith said curtly. “Billions.”  
“Wow. That must be magical.”

“It is. But Takashi’s an ass-kisser—if he found you he’d hand you over to our father in a heartbeat,” Keith told him.

“Oh. Are you sure?”

“Absolutely positive. And I’m guessing you know what Zarkon would do with you,” he said, and the answer was unanimous. The last thing Lance wanted was to go to Homerealm. Not now, not ever.

“Tell me about your brother,” Lance prompted, and a sour look came to Keith’s face. He narrowed his eyes at Lance and turned away, dropping his hand from Lance’s elbow. “Oh, come on, you don’t like him?”

“Well—No, definitely not,” Keith huffed. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to talk about him to _you_. I have work to do.”

Lance watched after Keith, sighing to himself. He thought about how much of a shame it was that Keith wasn’t the son of a social god—maybe they would have met sooner. Lance was thankful, though, that he wound up here in the Underworld of all places. It was better to discover the love of his life later than never at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Half of the next chapter is done, so I'll probs post it around Friday :)
> 
> [My Tumblr](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUw1e7vvSRY)


	10. shaylin adventure resort

The rain pattered on the roof of Keith’s car as they pulled up to the curb outside of Lance and Hunk’s house. His headlights cut through the downpour and shined on the damp pavement as Lance turned away from the windshield to smile at Keith. 

“Thanks for hanging out with Finn and I today,” he said. “I’ll have to ask Hunk about tomorrow… do you have a phone, or…?”

“I could just pick you up, same time?” Keith suggested, and Lance went along with it. “And if it’s raining too much tomorrow, we could—”

“Watch movies or something?” Lance offered.

“Yeah, that sounds perfect,” Keith said, thankful that Lance was already there with a backup plan. 

Lance eased Finn out of the passenger’s seat and followed shortly after. He popped the umbrella up and waved at Keith before shutting the door. Keith stayed where he was as his eyes followed Lance sprint in front of his headlights with that ridiculously giddy Aussie at his heels. Keith hid his smile behind his hand while watching Lance rush up to the porch in the rain. Once he was certain Lance was safe inside, Keith started the car back onto the road.

Hunk wasn’t home, and so Lance wandered around the house for a while until his exhaustion knocked him out. It was early, and so he woke later that night to the smell of food cooking across the open living room. Finn was no longer snuggling with him, and after a moment of panic, he realized that all the lights were on. 

Lance sat up and squinted over to where Hunk was opening up the refrigerator and pulling out a container of spinach. 

“Ah, he awakes,” Hunk said, smiling as Lance stood up and wandered over. He rubbed at his eyes, and then at the itchy patch in his hair where the skin was healing. He saw Hunk’s smile tighten as he looked away, and back at the food on the stove. 

As Hunk turned away, Lance realized why the atmosphere felt so awkward. _Shit, I totally hit on him this morning_ , he remembered, the pressure of his hand on his head increasing as he tried to cover his face and rearrange it into something more innocent.

_Just forget it ever happened. Act like nothing’s weird_ …

“About this morning…” Hunk started.

“No, I don’t want to talk about it…” Lance moaned, leaning his head on the counter to hide his face. 

“Lance… come on, we’ve got to talk about it,” he insisted, and Lance moaned some more. “I just… I feel bad because I feel like I encouraged it and all I don’t want you to feel weird here, you know? Because, I mean, you don’t have any of your memories and I don’t want you to feel alienated…”

“I’m not alienated,” Lance groaned. “I’m embarrassed…”

“Lance…” Hunk sighed. Lance grudgingly looked up and met his eyes. “If you have a crush on me…”

“Oh _gods_ , Hunk…”

“I just want you to know that I’m totally flattered,” he said, and Lance went back to putting his head on the counter. “And since I’ve been your friend for literally our entire lives, I’d totally consider—”

“Hunk no…”

“I mean, maybe I dismissed my gay phase too soon, who knows?” Hunk said, and Lance couldn’t help himself—he wheezed with laughter, clutching at his stomach and then his head as Hunk sidled up to him and cried, “Be my gay awakening, Lance!” 

Lance snorted so hard his nose hurt, and he moaned in pain, clutching at his face.

“Oh! Oh, oh my God, I’m so sorry,” Hunk squeaked, raising his hands as if to hold them to Lance’s nose before thinking twice about it.

Lance blushed red, reminded of just how thrilled he was as he thought about what life must have been like for his counterpart before all this. Living a domestic life with this beautiful specimen and their non-binary Australian Shepherd—truly the dream for all mankind.

But then he was reminded of how flatteringly Keith offered his hand to Lance on the beach. How Keith’s eyes lightened with every word that tumbled out of Lance’s mouth, and how his attention to Lance motivated him to do anything and everything to stay in that same moment. To keep talking, if only to melt into a deliciously content puddle of Keith’s affections for him…

“It’s fine, Hunk, honestly,” Lance laughed, waving his hand. “I… I got it wrong. It happens. And I’ll get over you.”

Hunk stepped back then, raising an eyebrow. “You will? I mean, of course you will. I’m not the only fish in the sea!”

“Exactly!” Lance laughed, grinning as Hunk went back to cooking. “And… I may have already found another fish.”

“What? How?” he blurted out, halting in the middle of the tile floor to turn back on Lance. His shock turned to confusion fast. “It’s been, like, how many days?”

“I met him on the beach when I took Finn for a walk,” Lance said, grinning giddily as Hunk’s jaw dropped lower. “He… took me out to lunch today. It was nice.”

When Lance said it, he wasn’t sure what he expected from Hunk—he didn’t know the guy all that well—so he jumped a foot in the air when Hunk screamed. At first Lance thought something horrible happened, but his screams turned to laughter as he ran around the counter again to tackle Lance in a hug.

“ _Oh my God!_ This is the greatest fucking thing I’ve ever heard!” he yelled, hoisting Lance out of his seat and spinning him around. “You’ve been complaining about getting a boyfriend for a year! I’ve been keeping track!”

“I’ve _what?!_ ” Lance squeaked.

“The day has come!”

“ _What?!_ ”

Hunk set him down, squeezing Lance around the shoulders as he flung his free hand out, highlighting the invisible words as he said, “Okay, next plan: Get Lance Laid. Not that you haven’t been getting laid—it’s just… It’s been a while.”

Lance blinked, certain that he missed something important here. Hunk pulled away from him, clasping him by the shoulders and giving him this sort of _pitiful_ smile, like Lance was unaware of something significant.

Hunk tested the words in his head before saying them, giving a small eye-roll in the process. “I mean, sometimes you’d get irritable if you didn’t, you know. But there’s tourists coming through here all the time and they’ve all been super nice and—”

“Are… you suggesting that I slept around a bunch before?” Lance said, grinning at the guilty way Hunk paced away, scratching a hand behind his head. “I did! Wow, this is news to me! What’s my type?”

Hunk shook his head, yelling incoherently as he gathered his thoughts. Lance laughed, wrapping his arms around the back of his chair as he watched Hunk cope with this new information Lance was giving him. At last, Hunk held a hand out to Lance, his expression hardened and stoic.

Lance hid his giggles behind his arm.

“Wait just a minute,” Hunk started, “you said you found someone. Who the fuck is he? I gotta approve of him first! Come on now!”

Lance told him, and as they argued over whether or not Keith had a Facebook, Hunk tried to pull up his profile on his phone. Nothing showed. Regardless, they were talking about everything to do with Lance’s date that day, and Lance realized just how great of a friend Hunk must have been for his counterpart. Hunk seemed entirely invested in Lance’s life and everything he talked about, as if it was happening mutually. Hunk’s understanding was different from Keith’s somehow, though, and Lance appreciated both of their attentiveness. It made him feel like the center of their worlds, and his ego was restored all over again.

They celebrated the occasion with dinner (as planned) and Hunk made smoothies to top it off. Lance took his pills and reveled in the calm of the evening as tiredness sunk in. Hunk let him snuggle into his side like before, and Lance let himself be convinced that this was home.

He slept through the night and, in the morning, Hunk left for work later than the day before. He helped Lance get ready for Date #2, insisting that Ezor would be thrilled to see him. 

“I can’t believe she gets to meet this Keith fellow first, though. I feel betrayed, Lance. _Betrayed_ ,” Hunk said as he yanked his umbrella off of a hook on the wall. 

“You’ll meet him eventually!” Lance promised. “I’ll see you later!”

With that, Hunk ducked down to give Sky her daily kiss —Hunk insisted today was a Sky day, and that Lance would just have to roll with it on Finnegan Skybarker’s orders. Lance crossed his arms as Hunk stood back up and said, “It’s what she’s told me.”

“What, do you speak dog now?” he said. “Sky was a Finn yesterday.”

Hunk took offense to the comment, laying a hand over his heart to shield it from Lance’s words. “Excuse you, Sky can be whatever she wants. Look at her and tell me she’s a Finn. Do it.”

Hunk was going to be late for work, but stood there while Lance stared Finnegan Skybarker down. He had to admit, Sky looked fluffier today, and smiley, too, if dogs were capable of having smiles. She was also wearing an embroidered collar that said “SKYBARKER” on it.

“I’m starting to wonder where you get these ideas from,” Lance confessed. “And I can’t tell—does the collar change?”

Hunk grinned cheekily, and Lance knew he hit the jackpot. Hunk left then with an abrupt goodbye, and so Lance was left to explore the house for the remaining collars. Sky followed him wherever he went.

Lance wound up in Hunk’s room and started rooting around in the guy’s desk drawers when Sky hopped up on the burgundy comforter. Lance straightened, turning to face her as her tail swished side to side, ears perked. He really couldn’t comprehend animals all that well, never could, but something about the way she sat by the end table spoke to him.

He wandered over to the table, and ducked down to pull out the basket stuffed underneath. It was full of dog toys and— _collars!_

“Excellent!” he cried. “Good dog, good dog! Yes you are! Yes you are!” He nestled into Sky’s fur before tossing the collars out on the sheets.

They were all black and blue and grey, and as Lance inspected the embroidered names, he realized they were all different. 

_FINNEGAN SKYBARKER_

_FINNEGAN_

_SKYBARKER_

“That scoundrel,” Lance gasped, realizing how and why Finnegan Skybarker was who she was each morning of the day when Lance was still asleep. He looked at Sky. “He lets you pick out your collars in the morning doesn’t he?”

Sky seemed to sense that the question was for her, and stuck out her paw to his chest. It was more like a punch, though, and a scratch because Lance took it like a mortal hit. He grunted, clutching at the spot she nailed him at. She didn’t seem at all ashamed, and jumped straight off the bed with a bark of excitement.

“Wow, rude,” he huffed, rubbing at the mark. Sky wouldn’t shut up, though, and continued barking until he heard a familiar voice laughing from the living room. 

_But I’m home alone_ , he reminded himself, startled. 

He shoved the collars into the basket under the table and hurried out of the room. He bolted out into the kitchen where he stopped at the sight of white hair and brown skin in his foyer. 

“Allura?” he said it without thinking, and the woman looked up at the sound of her name. The moment their eyes connected, a flood of recognition punched through his chest harder than Sky’s claw marks. Tears pricked at his eyes—how could he have let himself forget? “Allura!” he cried, rushing forward.

Her arms fell around him the moment he crashed into her. She squeezed him tight, and soothed his hair as he tried to pull himself from the wave of emotions that came with the memories. Allura—he had a sister, and he hadn’t spared her a single thought since she found him on the beach. The guilt was more powerful than anything, though, and all of his apologies were silenced.

“Sh… Lance, it’s okay. I’m here now—I’m sorry I stayed away for so long. I shouldn’t have done that to you,” she said, herding him over to the couch so he could collapse onto the cushions. 

He rubbed his hands over his eyes, ridding them of tears. He couldn’t seem to stop crying, though. “It’s okay, you had things to do. What’s going on? Is father sending me away?” he asked, looking up at her.

Allura’s brows were tightened in distress, and her hesitance to say anything made Lance wonder. “What is it?” he prompted.

“It’s just that—”

A knock sounded on the door.

Lance leapt with a start, his mind flipping back and forth between the present and the past before settling on remembering that he had guests coming. “Shit,” he hissed, looking out the bay window beside them. He could see Acxa in the passenger’s seat of Keith’s convertible, which meant—

“ _Shit_ , I’m sorry—I made plans today. I completely forgot—” Lance said, lunging to his feet and pulling Allura with him. He started dragging her to his room. “I’ve got a _date_ and you look like a goddess right now—which is a compliment but it also means he’d lose his mind if he saw you right now.”

“A date?” she repeated, voice pitching. “With _who?!_ ”

“Get decent and come out here after—I’ll introduce the two of you,” he said, and slammed the bedroom door in her face. 

She stood in the room alone for a moment, confused, and then muttered under her breath, “Get _decent?_ Don’t I look decent already?”

While Allura dressed herself in a human glamour, Lance sprinted to the door, checked his hair in the mirror on the wall, and opened it. He hoped he didn’t look too flustered, but every moment with Keith had him on the edge of it. He supposed it didn’t matter much.

“Hi,” he said, melting a little at the sight of Keith’s brilliant smile.

“Hey—you ready to go?” he asked, gesturing towards the car where Acxa leaned over to the driver’s side and honked the horn.

“I- Uh, yeah, yeah. It’s just—” he started, pointing inside and saying, “My sister wants to meet you.”

“Your sister?” Keith repeated, and as Lance tugged him inside, he hoped to whatever gods who were listening that this wasn’t the sister who nearly ruined everything.

He wasn’t that fortunate though.

A door opened off to the side, and Lance stood eagerly between them. Keith pulled his eyes away from Lance’s excitement to stare at Allura, who stared back, and they both seemed to grasp the fact that they were wearing disguises intended to look human. It was rather ridiculous, considering ever other “outing” with Allura tended to make Keith feel like a walking bottle of _gloom_ tied in a bow of I’ll-Kill-You. Allura, on the other hand, wore wispy clothes any other day, and her aura was far stronger and noticeable considering it was _white_ , like her hair. She couldn’t exactly blend in, even if she _was_ wearing jeans and a crop top.

“Keith! This is my sister Allura,” Lance said, “and Allura, this is the guy I’ve been seeing, Keith.”

“How long have you been—” she started, pegging Keith with a glare before pinning it on Lance. She was interrupted by Keith stepping forward, hand outstretched and a shit-eating grin on his face.

“Pleasure to meet you,” he said. “You’re welcome to come with us today.”

“What?” Lance squeaked, and Allura’s jaw dropped at him. “No, no, Allura, you wouldn’t want to come—It’s just a date—”

“I’d love to come,” she said, gritting her teeth. Keith couldn’t help but sneer at her before dropping his hand to reach for Lance’s. 

Keith walked Lance out of the house and waited patiently as he said his goodbyes to Sky and shut the door after Allura. He locked the door, trying not to show how irritated he was that Allura was chaperoning this. He was an adult! He could date people without having her breathing down his neck like this! 

With his back turned to them, Allura disguised their voices with a wave of her hand and hissed, “You’ve already got him eating out of the palm of your hand, don’t you? I find it hard to believe that you’re even capable of—”

“Of what? Charm? Oh, that’s right, we’ve barely talked until now to notice it,” Keith remarked, turning away with a roll of his eyes. “Maybe if you didn’t spend all of your energy on bitching me out, you might actually see why Lance likes me so much.”

“He probably _liked you_ because you were a last resort,” she hissed, and Keith scowled at her. “You were convenient. You had an out for him, and he took advantage of—”

“Okay! Let’s go!” Lance said, hurrying to pull Keith away as he stuffed his keys into his pocket. “We’re visiting my work! If it isn’t raining, my friend Ezor’s gonna take us on a short hike.”

“Exciting,” Allura said eagerly, grinning when Keith turned to glare at her from over his shoulder.

He held the back door open for Lance before dropping into the driver’s seat. As Allura sat down on the other side, Acxa twisted around to stare at her, and then at Keith. “Acxa, Allura, Lance’s sister. Allura, Acxa, now we can get moving,” he said dully, and Acxa pretended like they weren’t enemies.

Keith glanced at Allura through the rearview mirror, and found her already studying him. “So what exactly brings you to Altea, Keith?” she asked.

“Allura… you don’t have to pester him…” Lance groaned from beside her.

“It’s an honest question,” she countered.

“You don’t have to answer that,” Lance told him, but he smiled and reassured him that it was fine. Acxa was thrilled when she came up with their human backstory—it was dramatic, breathtaking, thrilling, and provided a hint of empathy that would draw Lance in. It was tailored to Lance, not Allura, though. 

He thought for a moment. “Acxa and I are on vacation. It’s practically summer, but we heard that up in the mountains you can still ski. Acxa’s an expert.”

“Really?” Lance said. “You never mentioned you skied.”

“I wouldn’t say I’m an expert,” she insisted, laughing nervously.

“What about you, Keith?” Allura prodded. “Do you ski?”

He could hear the teasing of her voice like a nail pecking at the back of his skull. “I do,” he lied. “But I’m more interested in hiking. Which is why I’m excited to see Lance’s work.”

Allura blinked and turned to look at Lance. _Work?_ He hadn’t mentioned anything about a job here. Lance’s ears colored as he murmured, “It’s an adventure resort tour guide service.”

Lance texted Ezor to let her know that they were on their way, and by the time they arrived in Altea, the mist had stopped, and the clouds were thinning. Lance peered up at the sky, and then over to Allura, who beamed at him knowingly. A moment later, they were pulling into the parking garage from before and emerging out into the sunlight. They hesitated out on the brick walkway just to stare at the blue sky before Keith looked at Allura accusingly. 

Allura merely smiled. “Well, there’s that good weather you were asking for,” she said. “I’m always up for a hike.”

 

. . .

 

The door chimed at the front of the Shaylin Adventure Resort as Ezor was helping a coworker at one of the computers. She turned in a tizzy—it’d been ages since she saw Lance last—but her excited seemed to pitch her straight over a cliff because her mind flew straight past Lance and targeted the girl walking in behind him. 

_Shit, who’s_ that _cutie over there?_

Ezor let out an involuntary squeak and covered her mouth. She hadn’t seen Lance in ages, and yet here she was, gawking at the lovely lady behind her. There were two lovely ladies, actually, but this one’s stylish black hair, narrow build, and sharp, articulate features had her fanning herself internally.

Eventually, she managed to look away long enough to realize that Lance was at the counter across from her. “You’re… Ezor, right? I recognize the pink hair from photos,” he said. It was probably fucked up, but she found his amnesia adorable, because it meant that they got to meet each other all over again.

She stretched a hand across the counter to him. “Yes! That would be me! Nice to see you again, Lance,” she said, and gestured to the others, specifically pegging the black-haired girl with an intriguing stare. “And… seems like you came with a crowd!”

“Oh! Yeah, this is Keith, Allura, and Acxa,” Lance said, pointing to each of them as Ezor went through and shook their hands, introducing herself as a friend of Lance’s.

Lance was gone for a month and came back with hot new friends. Ezor was jealous to say the least. She wanted to have that kind of game—she tended to _think_ she had that kind of game, but reality said differently most days. Lance _had_ always been the better flirt.

“Well, what’s the plan for today then?” Ezor asked, and couldn’t stop noticing how the woman—Acxa—kept smiling at her.

She pointed to Ezor and asked, “What kind of accent is that?”

Ezor gave a look that might have said she was confused, as if she hadn’t realized she had a voice different from a native Canadian. She laughed and said, “Australian. Yeah, I came here when I was seventeen, working summers mostly. Now I just sorta live here.”

“Whoa, that’s far away, isn’t it?” Lance said, and Ezor laughed because it was coming from someone who knew all this ages ago.

Ezor smiled sweetly, and Lance realized why they might have been friends. She was beautiful, friendly, and loved to talk their ears off. That was exactly what she did once they started out onto the trails with her. But before then, though, Keith and Allura stood side-by-side at the counter as Ezor totaled up the price of the hike, subtracting Lance’s fee. Keith pulled out his wallet as Allura did, and they nudged one another to put it away. They shoved their shoulders against one another and Keith tried to wrestle her wallet away, but she yanked out a card and hurriedly shoved it at Ezor. 

“For fuck’s sake, I was gonna pay,” Keith huffed. “Split the cost, half on her card, half on mine.”

“Piss off!” Allura laughed. “It doesn’t matter anyway, does it?”

Keith couldn’t argue with that, because their sort of money was endless. There was probably some explanation for it, for where the money in their credit cards came from—perhaps it was all syphoned out of the wallets of billionaires who wouldn’t see the difference of losing a hundred bucks to an adventure hiking facility. 

At the start of the hiking trip, Lance lingered near Keith, close enough for their shoulders to brush on occasion. The brief touches only made the distance between them feel so much greater, and Keith wanted nothing more than to hug the _shit out of him_. He missed how they were before, but he couldn’t change this, and he couldn’t deny how much he missed having Lance all to himself. But now, he was sharing his affection with everyone in the group, and had to watch him walk off to catch up with Ezor and Acxa at the front of the group. 

“I’m sure this is doing _wonders_ to your ego,” Allura huffed, falling into step with him.

“Oh, fuck off, sea witch,” Keith sneered, crossing his arms and looking the other way, through the pine trees. 

“Isn’t he cute though? As a human, I mean,” she said, and the comment brought his gaze over to her, and then ahead to where Ezor was flinging her arms in the air, and Lance threw his head back laughing. “So innocent…”

“Softer.”

“ _Breakable_ ,” she seethed, turning to Keith to say, “and I swear to Alfor if you _break him—_ ”

“That’s the last thing I want to do,” Keith sneered back, scowling at her. “Unlike you, _I’ve_ been the one taking care of corruptions during nightfall. There’s more of them each night.”

“It’s because we’re lingering around here like a bunch of fucking idiots,” she said under her breath. They reached a set of stairs, and Keith let Allura climb them first. “That can’t be easy for Lance. I think they’re one of the two things he hates most about being human here. He feels helpless.”

“He isn’t, though—”

“He doesn’t have any of his _powers_ , Keith,” she said, waiting for him at the top where she turned a distressed look after Lance and the others. “Of course he feels helpless. You should have seen the way he looked at me the other day. I’m trying to get Alfor to transfer him to the demigod island—he’ll be safer there, and he won’t have to worry—”

“Fuck that! Lance does need a fuckin’ demigod island. Besides, he really likes his roommate Hunk, and he’s got Ezor—he’s got _people_. And if he winds up at the demigod island, we can sure as fuck say goodbye to his godhood forever,” Keith said with a sarcastic wave of his hand. Only partial gods and full gods were allowed on the island, and the moment Keith would step foot on that island, Lance would know the truth and go screaming in the other direction.

“I know, and… I know Lance really likes you. As much as I hate admitting it…” She cleared her throat. “But have you considered that none of this will work out? Wouldn’t you prefer having him some place safe?”

“ _No_. Because in case you haven’t noticed, demigods _die_. And I don’t want to keep revisiting the same time period over and over again because _that won’t be Lance_ after a while. He’ll be the same as he always was. At least if he’s a god, he’ll get to change like the rest of us, and have eternity to do it.”

They were silent for a while, and Keith looked at her to gauge her reaction. He never could process what she was thinking, especially when she was as guarded as she was now. Her jaw was tense, and her eyes were sharp, focused forward, away from Keith.

He looked away and sighed, “Maybe I’m just selfish. I don’t know. I just know that I miss him too much to care.”

He picked up his pace, and hurried away from Allura to take Lance by the hand. She watched Lance’s cheeks color pink as he turned to Keith with a smile. Lance glanced over his shoulder at her, and gave an excited wink before resuming whatever conversation he was having with Ezor. Keith didn’t look at Allura after that, at least not intentionally.


	11. euphoria vs dysphoria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sexy times ensue.

Lance spent every moment he could with Keith. Most of the time, they were with Acxa, and if they weren’t with Acxa, she tended to be with Ezor. Ezor came knocking on their door one weekend night and Hunk answered with a thrilled scream that matched Ezor’s. 

She came leaping into their apartment, shouting at the top of her lungs, “I have a date! I have a date! With a _girl!_ I have a date with a _girl!_ ”

“Ah! So proud of you!” Hunk screamed, jumping up and down with her so that the floor shook beneath Lance’s feet from the kitchen.

“What? With who?” Lance asked.

“ _Acxa_ , duh! She asked me out! On a date!” Ezor said, and dissolved into high-pitched squeals. Sky lunged around them in her Skybarker collar, and shook so hard she nearly looked like a phone on vibrate. Ezor picked her up and spun her around. She danced lazily with Sky in her arms, singing, “I have a da-ate, I have a da-ate…”

“Acxa? Isn’t she that friend of Keith’s?” Hunk asked, and Lance nodded. “How is it that you meet all these good-looking people straight out of the hospital?”

“I don’t know. It must be _my_ good looks,” Lance said, displaying his snobbish grin with a hand beneath his chin. “And anyways, Ezor met Acxa that day we went hiking. That was, like, ages ago.”

“By ‘ages’ you mean three days, and all three days I saw her and she said hi like we’ve been friends for _years_ ,” Ezor said, collapsing into the couch. “And I’m so glad the weather’s looking up! We’re going up to the peaks!”

“Holy shit—who’s paying?” Hunk gawked, and this had Ezor sitting up straighter, Sky leapt out of her lap.

“Well… Um, I offered to pay for my own ticket? But she sort of insisted so I think she’s paying for the whole thing. But if we get food up there, I’m totally paying! No if, ands, or buts about it,” she said, and the surety in her voice had Lance smiling as he bit into a peanut butter sandwich. Sky came over to him, eager for handouts, but Hunk said plenty of times before to stop giving in to Finnegan Skybarker’s neediness.

Lance turned his nose up to Sky and looked at Hunk. Hunk looked at him and then at Ezor, and back to Lance. 

“Wait—You have a date tonight, right?” he said, pointing to Lance.

“When _doesn’t he_ ,” Ezor corrected, and Lance grinned against his sandwich. “That guy is _totally_ all over you. You get dinner with him every day.”

“That _is_ a lot of going out to eat,” Hunk agreed, dropping onto the cushion beside Ezor. “You know I don’t mind making dinner for you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Oh! No, no, I’m not worried about that,” Lance insisted, shaking his head. He was starting to realize that the way his head felt last week wasn’t normal—this was normal. His brain no longer felt like liquid sloshing in his skull. “I just like spending time with Keith. It’s… It’s nothing against you and your cooking.”

“You better swear that on your life, amigo,” Ezor joked, and Hunk glared at her mockingly. They both giggled and shoved one another until Lance finished his sandwich from where he stood safely in the kitchen, away from their shenanigans.

Once settled down, Hunk threw an arm over the back of the couch and looked to Lance. Lance swallowed hard when he got an eyeful of that man’s toned bicep. 

“Did you call your mom this morning?” he asked Lance.

Lance had, and had been nearly every morning since the first time he called her. Her voice was smooth and hinted with something foreign yet musical, and he loved to just listen to her talk. He didn’t mind listening to her, and how she talked about life back at home. She seemed eager to tell him all about his siblings, Julian and Rosa, and how much they missed him. He didn’t know them at all, but he appreciated the sentiment, and would do his best to return it.

He reassured Hunk that he did, and went to sit with them on the couch. Ezor insisted they watch something until Keith came to pick Lance up. They watched another one of Lance’s supposed “favorites”—the list just never seemed to end—and Lance paid attention half-heartedly. His mind was elsewhere, thinking of Keith and how much he wanted to see him again. Being away from Keith was suddenly starting to feel like… a constant _hunger_ settling in his chest rather than his stomach. Memories of his smile, his hair, his laugh were on repeat from the moment Keith dropped him off at home every night. It was all he could bother to think about when the outside world dissolved…

The doorbell rang. 

“I’ll get it!” Lance shrieked, but Ezor was flinging herself off the couch at lightning speed. Lance screamed and chased after her, scrabbling to hold her back, but she made it to the door before he could even catch his footing. 

She flung the door open and squealed, “Keith! Lovely to see you again! Lance is just on the floor right now.”

“He what?” Keith said, peering in through the screen door as Lance swung out from nowhere and nudged between Ezor and the door.

Lance ignored Ezor’s wiggly eyebrows as he beamed at Keith. “Hey,” he said, knowing he probably sounded like a lovesick idiot, but they all already knew that.

“Hey,” Keith said, pulling the screen door away so that Lance could tip forward and hug him around the torso. “Ready to go?”

“Not yet—I just have to get my shoes on,” Lance said, pulling away to go ahead and do just that. 

Keith stepped into the foyer and let the door shut behind him. He waved to Hunk, who smiled from the couch, and then readdressed the fact that Ezor was hanging out in Lance’s house. “Acxa mentioned that you two had a date planned?” he commented.

Talk of it had Ezor smiling all over again like a giddy schoolgirl. “Yeah, why? Did she say anything about me?”

“Just that she’s really excited about tonight,” Keith said, laughing as Ezor swooned onto the couch once more, falling into Hunk’s arms. Lance hurriedly zipped up the sides of his boots and started towards the door before Ezor and Hunk could make fools of themselves in front of Keith. He assumed that they were past the point of no return, but it wouldn’t hurt to be careful when it came to tarnishing his reputation in Keith’s eyes.

Keith reached out and held onto Lance’s hand. He let himself be dragged out the door as he waved farewell to Hunk and Ezor. Lance’s fingers were soft and gentle, and unlike anything Keith had ever felt before. This human version of Lance was too precious to waste time with, and so he promised himself to never let go. Still, that was a bit of a difficult task considering they had to separate to get inside the car. The moment they were both settled in, though, Keith put the car in drive and reached for Lance’s hand again. 

The sensation of Lance’s fingers gliding up his palm had a delighted shiver running down his spine. It tingled his human skin, and softened his resolve with the way Lance folded his fingers into the spaces between Keith’s fingers. 

Keith tried not to show just how excited he was. Until he met Lance, hiding his emotions was an easy task, and now it was becoming more and more difficult to maintain that stoic, apathetic exterior he was generally known for. He was cracking, and he was grateful that Lance was the one to see who he was without his father’s militant upbringing. 

“Ezor and Acxa make such a cute couple,” Lance said, his eyes focusing on the pine trees outside of his passenger window. “All Ezor talks about now is Acxa. I don’t know much about Ezor, but Hunk says that she hasn’t had a girlfriend in a while. Do you think Acxa’s serious about dating her?” 

The question was jarring, and Keith couldn’t help but look twice at Lance before saying anything. After Lance confessed his love for Keith, he just assumed they’d head back to the Underworld and put all of this behind them. He was starting to wonder if Lance was even thinking about his life before. _What if he’s forgetting who he actually is?_ he thought, but Lance had always been empathetic. It made sense that he would care about Ezor.

“I… don’t know. I haven’t really talked to Acxa about it, I guess?” he said with a shrug. He lifted Lance’s hand up closer to his cheek, and kissed the side of Lance’s palm. “She’s sorta… I mean, Acxa’s serious about everything she does, but she sort of runs around? She has a lot of flings. So I don’t know what to make of her obsession with Ezor.”

“Oh,” Lance said, and Keith saw his frown out of the corner of his eye. Lance turned away, disgruntled, and didn’t say anything for a minute. Eventually, as Keith steered the convertible around the bends in the road, between the pine trees, Lance leaned over and turned the radio on. Keith hadn’t been using it, and wasn’t sure what to expect, and after fiddling with it for a while, they were stuck on a station filled with crackly audio, and a man’s voice on the other end speaking to them about irrelevant things that neither of them paid much mind to.

“— _lives are determined by a scale of significance. We take in the data of our experiences from day to day, and sort these encounters under the branches of significance: relevance and irrelevance. We tell ourselves stories about who we are, where we would like to go, and how we are going to get there based on things that get us on our way, and things that get_ in _our way. You see, this could also be—_ ”

“Do you have many flings?” Lance asked suddenly, and Keith really shouldn’t have been alarmed by the waver in Lance’s voice. Lance fluctuated, even in the Underworld, and Keith came to terms with frequently consoling him as best he could. “Am… _I_ just a fling? Because you’re on vacation and you’ll be leaving soon—”

“No—No, no, no, you aren’t. You aren’t just a fling, Lance,” Keith insisted quickly, tightening his hold on Lance’s hand before he could pull away. “I don’t have flings. I never have.” 

_I never even_ dated _before you came along_ , Keith reminded himself. He wasn’t anything like his eldest, distant brother. He barely considered himself _related_ to Lotor because they were both so different from one another. At least he and Shiro had some similarities, but Lotor was certainly his mother’s son. The closest resemblance they had happened to be their more elemental sides. The foundation of their magic was fire.

Unlike Lotor, Keith never made time for “frivolous” things such as romance. Lotor was always out to woo the sons and daughters of other gods, and Keith barely tolerated their presences. It must have been too much of a surprise for Shiro to even fathom, finding out that not only was Lance in the Underworld, but also that Keith had fallen completely in love with him.

“Really?” Lance said. “How many guys have you dated?”

“One, really,” Keith confessed, inhaling sharply as he glanced at Lance and turned towards the parking garage. 

The man on the radio broke through the momentary silence: “ _—_ _Most things are irrelevant – and that is a good thing, as we have limited attentional resources—_ ”

“Who was it?” Lance asked.

“Are you kidding?” Keith couldn’t help but laugh. “You, obviously. No one else really mattered enough before now.”

The moment Keith parked the car, he turned just in time to catch Lance flinging himself at him. He burst into laughter as Lance kissed all across his cheek and temple. Something expanded in Keith’s chest like a balloon full of the sort of bliss he longed to have again with Lance. He let Lance kiss the corner of his mouth before turning and sealing the gap between them with a long, sentimental kiss. It reminded him of the time Lance first kissed him, and it took him a moment to realize that this was because it was for this new, softer version of Lance.

Lance cupped his face between his two, gentle hands and rubbed the pads of his thumbs over Keith’s freshly shaven skin. He could hear their breaths rising as they separated. When he breathed in through his nose, he smelt the cologne on Keith’s skin, and how it filled his senses with a desperation for more. 

He hadn’t thought about what Hunk said, about how Lance used to be before the concussion, and the coma, and how he used to pine for affection and release through various other partners. He didn’t think much of it at the time, but there was something so innocent with Keith never having been with another guy. For someone with such an aggressive sexual appeal, it was almost laughable that Keith never dated before Lance. 

He loved it.

He kissed Keith one last time before saying, “So what’s the plan? Out to eat? Movies?”

Keith blinked. The stimulation was overwhelming, and having Lance hover over him like that gave him an adorable, blissed-out look on his face that Lance smiled at. 

Keith swallowed hard and said, looking off to the side, “I… was going to make something for lunch and we could… stay in for the evening.”

“That sounds good,” Lance agreed, pushing away so that he could breath again. He sat back in his seat and combed a hand through his hair before hurriedly opening his door and stepping out. It took a moment for Keith to recover and think to shut off the car.

Just before his key left the ignition, the man on the radio said, “ _—only have so many outlets to exert. It’s why our relationships cycle around a few specific individuals, no matter how extroverted you might think yourself—_ ” The voice cut out, and Keith pushed his door open and swung his legs out. As he shut the door, Lance was there taking Keith’s unoccupied hand, and leading him to the elevator that would take them up to the hotel room.

Keith couldn’t take his eyes off of Lance as they stood in the elevator together, watching each other through the mirrored walls. He watched the wall behind Lance fall out into a black tunnel, reflecting the mirror behind Keith. Lance took Keith’s hand in both of his own, and played with his fingers until the elevator doors opened. 

At Keith’s door, Lance asked, “How long are you staying here for? You haven’t told me.”

Keith swiped the card and bumped the door open with his hip, smiling at Lance as he said, “However long you want me here, I guess.”

Lance gave him a flat look, but when Keith turned away to unlace his shoes, he couldn’t help but smile. “That’s not a realistic timeframe.”

“Seems pretty realistic to me,” he said, and the moment Lance had his boots off, Keith pulled him away from the foyer and let the door lock behind them. 

Keith’s hands drifted up Lance’s neck, his fingers brushing against the baby hairs that curled around Lance’s ears. He cupped his palms around Lance’s jaw and drew him closer so that their lips barely grazed one another. He waited as Lance’s eyes fluttered closed, and let Lance be the one to bring them together again.

Lance coaxed him into a languid kiss that reminded Keith of mornings on Earth. Of waking up in a bed doused in sunlight that warmed every inch of his tingling skin. He shuddered against the sensation, and let himself relax into it, to let Lance lead the way. His limits were hazy with humans, so he was delighted with the way Lance paced the kiss, and how it made his insides coil with warmth, and all but burst when Lance pulled away and asked, voice a hoarse whisper:

“Is Acxa here?” 

Keith shook his head, thumbs grazing Lance’s cheeks as he said, “No, she isn’t. We have the place to ourselves.”

An ecstatic shiver ran up Lance’s spine where it sparked a giddy smile. He pulled Keith’s hands from his cheeks and hurried across the room to the double doors leading to the honeymoon suite, and the king-sized bed. Lance laughed as he hastily pulled the curtains closed over the windows, and it left a strip of sunlight over the pillows as Lance bounded across them to where Keith was standing, breathless.

Lance lunged for him, and as they collided, Keith wrapped his arms tight around Lance’s torso and dropped them both onto the mattress. Their lips met again as they laughed, and giggled over the buttons on Keith’s pants, and the belt around Lance’s waist. Keith bunched up the hem of Lance’s shirt, and lifted it up past his arms so he could toss it off to the side.

“Just—take them off already,” Lance said, grinning eagerly as Keith yanked on Lance’s belt and said, “I’m _trying_ , gods. So impatient.”

He wished, momentarily, that he could snap his fingers and be done with removing his clothes, but rationally he knew that would end terribly. So, he let Lance peel his shirt up from over his stomach. He lifted his arms and arched back, wiggling himself out of the shirt. Lance laughed until he finished tossing the shirt off the bed and turned back to Keith. His eyes dropped instantly to Keith’s stomach, his chest, and everything he hadn’t seen until then. 

Lance slapped his hands on Keith’s abdomen. 

“What was that for?” Keith laughed, and rolled his eyes as Lance’s hands drifted all over him. His thumbs soothed between the soft ridges of his human abs, and then beneath Keith’s pecs. Truthfully, the sensation tickled.

“You’re so…” Lance started, and lost his train of thought when Keith pulled away and stood against the side of the bed. He pushed his jeans down and waited for Lance to do the same, but it took a moment for Lance to realize it. Instead, he turned pink from his cheeks to his ears, and the blush spotted over his neck in a way that reminded Keith that this would be so incredibly different from every other time he and Lance had sex. 

If he didn’t start reminding himself now, he’d lose control. The last thing he wanted was to break his human glamour in the middle of sex.

Lance suddenly scrambled over to Keith, and before any of them could stop the other, Lance grabbed Keith’s underwear by the hem and yanked it down.

“ _Shit_ —That wasn’t—I totally did _not_ mean to do that. It just sort of happened,” Lance squeaked, clasping his hands over his mouth as Keith stood there, completely naked thanks to Lance’s impeccable patience. 

Lance stared at him for a solid five seconds before slowly drawing his eyes up to meet Keith’s. Keith couldn’t help but laugh and say, “Are you okay with this? Second thoughts?”

He didn’t intend for it to sound like a challenge, but suddenly Lance’s jaw was setting, and he stood up on the bed and shoved both his jeans and boxers down to his ankles and stepped out of them. 

“I don’t get second thoughts,” he said sharply. When Keith laughed at that, Lance’s serious face broke into a grin. He dropped down onto blankets, and Keith hurried after him, peppering kisses all along Lance’s brown skin as Lance shimmied up to the pillows, grinning like a fool. 

_You look so perfect, even human_ , Keith wanted to say as he finally reached Lance’s colored cheeks, and round, blue eyes. 

They had plenty of different sorts of sex back in Keith’s now nonexistent estate, and he wasn’t opposed to any of it. He wasn’t sure what this Lance would bring, but it was everything Keith could have hoped for. They were giggly throughout all of it, and really, the entire thing was ludicrous the moment Keith pulled a bottle of lube off of the nightstand and Lance said, “Who just keeps lube out in the open like that?”

Keith raised an eyebrow at him, sitting back and squeezing a hefty dollop onto his palm. “Someone who knows they’re getting _laid_.” Lance slapped a hand over his face, but Keith could still see the laughter shaking his shoulders.

Lance laced his fingers through the hair against Keith’s neck, and Keith was sure that this, combined with the euphoria they both felt upon entry, was perhaps the greatest thing he’d ever feel. He kept his eyes on Lance’s face—from his red lips to the way his brow puckered when he pushed his head back against the pillows and _moaned_ —and he couldn’t look away. 

 

. . .

 

Afterwards, and after sharing a long, _long_ shower together, they settled on the pillows where the afternoon light had shifted up to the headboard above their heads. Lance was laughing about something as Keith wrapped his arm around Lance from behind, and drew lazy circles against Lance’s arm. After a moment of silence, he felt Lance shake beside him, and watched out of the corner of his eye as Lance raised a hand up to his face.

Keith tipped his head towards Lance and watched as he brushed away the moisture collecting at the corners of his eyes. 

Lance sniffed. “I get this… _weird_ feeling like I do this every time…” he said, voice cracking into a sob.

Keith pulled him closer, and lifted them up so that they sat with his back against the headboard, and Lance balled up between his bare legs. It did happen once in a while—Lance’s post-sex blues—and for the most part, Keith learned to cope with them. He never felt the urge to cry after sex if that was all it was, but if he saw Lance cry like this, his empathy for it sometimes made it feel like he _could_ cry.

“It’s okay. It happens,” Keith murmured against Lance’s hair. As Keith reassured him with quiet whispers, Lance’s breathing evened, and he was finally able to brush away the tears one last time without having to rub at his eyes again. Lance tipped his head against Keith’s chest and sighed. 

“Sorry for ruining it,” Lance said, looking down at the tops of his knees. 

“You didn’t ruin anything. It sucks, but I think it’s normal. For people to cry after sex,” he confessed. “And I don’t mind it. It means I get to hug you.”

Lance scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Sadist.”

“I just comforted you, you asshole,” Keith laughed, and Lance shoved him playfully before crawling out of his lap and reaching towards the floor for his boxers. He threw Keith his pair, so he put them on before climbing over to where Lance was tugging on his boxers. He kissed the back of Lance’s shoulder, and moved to the ridges of Lance’s spine. 

“You mean so much to me,” he said against Lance’s skin, the moisture of his lips leaving marks along Lance’s goosebumps. “I’d do anything to make you happy.”

Lance turned on the bed to face him, curious blue eyes widening as Keith lifted his lips from Lance’s shoulder to stare at him. Lance blinked, glancing away for a moment, and repeating a look Keith knew too well. He saw it nearly every damn day in the Underworld, and waited for it each hour he spent with Lance. He yearned for it each minute on Earth, and his heart hummed as Lance opened his mouth and said:

“I…” 

He stopped, catching Keith’s eyes again. His eyes narrowed, and his eyebrow shot up. “Um…” he started, and reached hesitantly towards Keith’s face. His fingertip touched Keith’s cheekbone for a split second before jolting away. “Your… Your _eyes_ are—”

Keith frowned and reached up to touch where Lance grazed his skin. It was hot, but it was nothing unusual, considering—

_Shit_.

Lance bolted off of the bed, staring at Keith for a split second before hurriedly grabbing his clothes. He clasped a hand over his mouth and turned away, frozen in what Keith could only describe as fear. The moment Keith stood to go to him, Lance leapt with a shout and sprinted for the bathroom. 

“Lance, wait! Please, just—”

“Fuck off!” Lance seethed through the doorway. The instant he said it, his jaw dropped in horror before slamming the door and locking it. As if that would keep a god out.

Lance shoved his clothes on, hands shaking and face pale as could be when he looked at himself in the mirror and heard Keith say from the other side of the door, “I won’t come in there, just… tell me what you want? Do you want me to get Allura?” 

Lance crouched on the tiles with his hands in his hair. _I have to be dreaming. Please tell me this is a nightmare_. He thought of the way Keith’s eyes washed over in red, and how it fractured like embers beneath his skin. Now that he had witnessed a portion of Keith’s godhood, he felt like an imbecile for falling for his weak human glamour. 

How could he possibly have believed that _anyone_ would fall for him so quickly? 

“Lance?” a familiar, quiet voice called from the other side of the door. Lance looked up, eyes burning as Allura spoke again, voice muffled by the door. “It’s… It’s me, Allura. Please talk to me? Keith said his glamour broke and I’m worried that—”

“That _what_? I’d realize you _lied to me?_ ” he all but screamed. “You _saw him!_ You _knew!_ Why didn’t you _tell me?!_ ”

“Because I was wrong!” she cried, voice shaking. “I was wrong, and I was selfish, and I never wanted you to—I’m supposed to be your older sister, and instead of protecting you and understanding you, I used your amnesia to manipulate you. I didn’t want to believe that you had fallen in love with Kogane, but—”

“I would _never_ fall in love with one of Zarkon’s sons!” Lance hissed.

“Lance, I—”

“I learned from your mistakes!” he said, and the insult triggered silence on Allura’s end. He hesitated, and wished he hadn’t gone that far. Her affections for Shirogane were a sore spot, and he learned ages ago not to bring it up. 

He couldn’t back down now.

“So I don’t believe you,” he hissed. “I don’t believe that I could have done it. Did Shirogane put you up to this? Did he tell you to side with Kogane?”

“Stop it, Lance,” Allura hissed. “I made up my own mind. Takashi has nothing to do with this.”

“That’s fucking bullshit. He probably came crying with those fake tears of his, saying, ‘Oh, my beloved Allura, I’ll take you back if you’d just do this one favor and _fuck up your entire relationship with your brother—_ ’”

“ _LANCE!_ ”

“‘ _Sell his soul to the devil and we’ll ascend to Cloud Fuckall and—_ ’”

The door disappeared. It was like there was a random glitch in reality where a solid wall was replaced with the light from the window beyond the bed, and the shadow Allura cast over him. She stormed into the bathroom, white hair crackling with power as Lance scrambled back, slamming into the edge of the tub as Allura jabbed a finger at him.

“I never would have done this had you not _run away,_ ” she seethed. “I didn’t know where you were for an entire _year_. You could have been _anywhere_ , and yet you happened to choose the _Underworld_ , of all places. Any rational god would have looked at the situation and figured you were kidnapped, because how else would you have wound up there in the first place!”

“Then I must have been—!”

“ _No_ , you _weren’t_ ,” she hissed. “And if it weren’t for the fact that you ran away without _telling me_ , we might actually know a thing or two about how you wound up there. But regardless, I was _wrong_ and I am admitting that to you. Don’t you _dare_ accuse me of trying to damn you, because I love you too much to do that.”

Lance’s eyes began to water against everything he wanted to be right then and there. He wanted scream at her for tricking him, and for going along with all of this. He wanted to scream for having slept with Zarkon’s son. He didn’t want to _cry about it_ , and yet, there he was. All of the words he wanted to say compressed into a low whine before he broke into a sob, hands over his eyes to keep from staring up at Allura in her fury.

Allura bent down over him and wrapped him up in her arms. He tucked his eyes against the high collar of her shirt and huddled into her when she walked him out of the bathroom. He wrapped his arms around her neck so that he could hide his face between them, so he wouldn’t have to see Keith standing out there, his glamour completely dissolved. 

“I’m so sorry,” he started, and Allura looked up at him, eyes glassy and her distress knitting her brows together. 

When she arrived there, called by the sensation of Keith chanting her name in his head, the first thing out of his mouth had been, “He was about to say it and I lost control of my glamour. H- He got this _look on his face_ , and it happens every time he says, ‘I love you,’ like I’m not gonna say it back. We were so close and I fucked up.”

Seeing Keith Kogane now had her heart twisting into a knot. She decided he was a good person too late. 

“I’m sorry, Keith,” she said, and a jolt of light rippled from her hair, and drenched her and Lance in a shock of lightning. They dissolved into soft, diamond-shaped particles and flickered out of the room. The gap they left behind was immediately filled by the shape of the bathroom door swinging back into place. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I read too many articles on postcoital dysphoria before writing this BECAUSE I FEEL LIKE LANCE WOULD SUFFER FROM SOMETHING LIKE THAT. He seems like the boy who'd get emotional after sEX OK???
> 
> [Tumblrrr](http://girlskylark.tumblr.com/)


	12. corruptions

Allura didn’t know where to take Lance, but she was already standing in front of Hunk and Lance’s house. It would have to do for now. Evening was just settling in, and the sunlight was warm and golden where it crested over the trees. She turned to look out at the street, and when she returned her attention to the house walkway, she was a human again. 

Lance touched his bare feet to the concrete and rubbed his hands over his eyes. He recognized this street, and when he saw the house, a breath of relief lulled over him. He was back home. 

“Will you be okay here? Until I talk to father?” Allura asked, and Lance nodded mutely before realizing that he’d be alone again. 

He clutched onto her hand. “Stay with me? Please?”

“I can’t, Lance…” she sighed, and bit her lip as she watched Lance’s eyes tear up again. “I know it hurts, but you’ll be fine on your own. And you have Hunk!”

Allura held Lance’s face between her hands, and rubbed her thumbs beneath Lance’s eyes. It reminded him of the way Keith pushed his tears away and told him it was okay to cry. His sly grin when he cradled Lance’s jaw, and grazed the pads of his thumbs over Lance’s cheeks as he said, “We have the place to ourselves,” just an hour before. 

It just made him cry harder, and fall towards Allura so he could muffle his sobs against her shirt.

After a moment of uncertainty, Allura decided that it’d be best to sit outside until Lance calmed down. They sat together on the short span of grass outside of the house. When Lance was able to pull away and breathe properly, he laid back on the grass, and stared up at the tufts of white clouds stretching like cotton across the great blue. He sniffed and rubbed the sleeve of his shirt over his cheeks to try and get rid of that post-crying sensation. It didn’t work, but staring at the clouds helped.

“I love Earth’s sky,” he whispered, not trusting his voice to stay steady. 

Allura looked up, and hesitantly laid down beside him. She stared at his profile before following his gaze up to the sky. She was surprised that the weather was holding up, especially after that whole fiasco. She completely forgot to steady it. Distantly, she could still feel her father’s turmoil churning in the threads of existence.

“It is a beautiful sky,” she agreed. Lance hummed, clearing his throat, and fell quiet again. She looked at him, “Lance, I really hope you won’t stay mad at me. I’m sorry for misleading you.”

“You didn’t mislead me,” he said, as though trying to convince himself of this false fact. 

“I manipulated you,” she said, looking back at the clouds. “I… Truthfully, I was jealous. Of other things, but also that I would have to share your affection with Keith. I worried that… if you went back to him, you’d never speak to me again. You didn’t even try to contact me in that year you spent in the Underworld. You could have sent something with Acxa, or just… left entirely…”

Lance swallowed hard, fighting back the way his throat wanted to tie itself in a knot. “So Acxa’s a goddess, then.”

“Yes. Of war and strategy. She has free passage through the Underworld and is good friends with Kogane,” she said, and watched the way Lance processed this information. Another lie she refused to clear up until now. “She helped Kogane with his glamour, and getting him here. She probably came up with whatever human story Keith told you. She’s a clever storyteller.”

“So it was all bullshit, is what you’re saying.”

“Yes, but I don’t think Keith’s intentions were. He did everything to try and bring you back,” she said. Lance looked at her then, and stared as she tried to format a way to say it. To say that Keith was the key to Lance’s godhood. With the way Lance took everything, she knew he wouldn’t like it.

“Lance!” someone shouted from the house. 

Lance bolted up, and turned to find Hunk hurrying down the steps, laughing. “You’re back! I was just about to call you!”

“O-Oh,” Lance squeaked, and looked down at Allura. 

Allura stood up, brushing off her pants as Hunk stared at her and asked, “Um… Who’s this?”

“This is…?” Lance started, and gestured vaguely to Allura.

“I’m Lance’s sister, Allura,” she said, and Lance could feel the shock of her magic setting in as Hunk didn’t even bat an eye at the comment. “I’m here on vacation,” she added weakly, “visiting… Lance. Yeah.”

“Excellent! Then you should join us for a killer celebratory meal!” Hunk declared, taking Lance by the arm and hurrying back to the house. “I figured you’d be back late so it’s more of a dessert than anything.”

Lance stumbled after him and up the steps to the door. Sky was waiting for them, wagging her tail with such ferocity that it felt like a whip against Lance’s legs. He bent down to pet her as Allura followed along and shut the door behind them.

“You’ll never believe what happened,” Hunk said, grabbing a slip of paper off of the counter. He all but ran back to them, out of breath. “Oh my God, it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever heard of.”

“What is it?” Lance said, picking Sky up to keep her from squirming like a fiend and attacking Allura. Allura hesitantly pat her head.

Hunk unfolded the paper and held it up to them. Allura squinted at it. “Your entire medical bill’s been paid for. I don’t know what happened, but some rich guy found the fundraiser page I made for you.”

Lance’s jaw dropped. He didn’t understand how money worked, necessarily, but Hunk had been worrying about Lance’s expenses since the day Hunk brought him back to Altea from the hospital. He set Sky on the couch and snatched the paper. It was a printout of an email notification, alerting Hunk to his goal being reached. 

“What does this mean?” Allura asked.

“It _means_ that all of Lance’s expenses are covered! He won’t have to work his ass off to pay it, and the fundraiser also helped a little with the cost of living here, so his rent for the month will be covered once it goes through,” Hunk explained. “Otherwise I’m not sure what Lance would have done if the goal hadn’t been met. I was talking to his mom the other day, and she had suggested Lance go _home_ , and so now that won’t need to happen.”

Allura followed Hunk to the kitchen, asking questions about what _that_ would have meant for Lance. Lance stayed by the couch, reading over the list of names on the email Hunk printed out. It included everyone who donated, followed by their amount. 

He saw Ezor’s name on there, and he recognized a few others just based on the amount of time he and Hunk spent going through Lance’s Facebook. He stopped at the highest amount, totaling thousands of dollars to the exact amount the goal was missing. 

It was listed under the name _Alfor_.

“Father!” Lance cried, and slapped his hand over his mouth when both Hunk and Allura turned to look at him. He stared at his sister, and then at Hunk before forcing out a weak excuse. “I… forgot that I need to call my father—and my mom!”

“Oh man, your mom’s so cool. I bet she’d be thrilled to hear about this,” Hunk said with a wistful sigh, and earned a bizarre look from Allura for it. 

Allura rolled her eyes and, with a snap of her fingers, sent Hunk freezing in motion. He stuck to the kitchen tiles, his hands clasped together against his cheek like he was swooning over the thought of Lance’s parents back in America.

Lance hurried over, turning the page out to her. “Father paid off the medical bill! Does that mean—?”

She took the paper and swore under her breath. “He must be—”

Outside, they heard a musical car horn go off. 

Allura threw the paper down and ran to the living room where Sky was barking at the window, paws on the back of the couch. Lance chased after her, and pushed himself up to see a fluorescent blue convertible pull up to the curb out on the street. Lance gave a cry of bewilderment, and nearly fainted straight over Sky on the couch. Allura’s jaw dropped, eyes as wide as could be as she shouted, “You’ve _got_ to be kidding me! What does he think he’s doing?!”

The driver’s side of the convertible pushed open, and a pair of white Vans stepped out onto the asphalt. They were complimented by dark brown, tanned skin and excessive white leg hair, and it was all topped with a pair of cargo shorts and a vibrant Hawaiian shirt that had Lance throwing his head down on the couch cushions with a horrified groan.

“ _La—ance!_ ” his father sang, throwing his arms out with a kick of his leg. He pushed his sunglasses up into his spiky, white hair and thrust his hands onto his hips, sighing up at the sight of the porch, and the living room window where Allura stared at him in horror. 

“Allura! What a lovely surprise!” Alfor cried out, and waved ecstatically at her. 

She dropped her head forward onto her arms, moaning, “Father, why…”

Lance looked back at where Hunk was still swooning in the kitchen, and then grudgingly stood up and headed for the front door. Allura gawked at him, and sputtered, “Wh- What? Are you—? Are you seriously going to entertain this?!”

With a heavy sigh, Lance looked at her flatly and shoved open the door to the sound of their father screaming, “ _LANCE! I MISSED YOU SO MUCH!_ ” before all but flinging himself over the porch to slam straight into Lance.

Lance staggered back from the threshold, arms up as his father nestled against his chest, arms squeezing the life out of him. The instant Alfor loosened up, Lance took a gasp of air before he could lose it again. Alfor’s white hair tickled his chin as the grown god sobbed into his son’s arms, sniffing, and saying with a watery voice, “Never leave me again…”

“Father, what are you doing there? You really didn’t need to— _Oh!_ Okay,” Lance squeaked, suddenly thrust into the air by Alfor lifting him up off the ground and spinning him around. 

“I spent an entire year looking for you! Oh, I was so worried, I thought something terrible must have happened to you—and I was _right_.” Alfor’s voice hardened at the end, lowering to a sneer that had Allura hurrying to calm him down. Lance could feel the shift in the air, and he could smell the impending rainstorm before the sky was even able to cloud over. 

Alfor set him down, cradling Lance’s head to his chest as he seethed, “That monster _Zarkon_. He was always my least favorite sibling. He’ll pay for your abduction.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Allura said, waving her arms. “That is… That is definitely _not_ necessary—”

“He can’t get away with this,” Alfor roared, and the inner spoilt brat in Lance made him want to break down into tears and beg his father to annihilate every one of them in the Underworld. Instead, though, his eyes widened, and he stared at Allura helplessly from where Alfor had his head pushed into the fabric of his Hawaiian shirt.

“Regardless…” Allura started softly, “Lance suffered from a major concussion, so I probably wouldn’t be too aggressive with him…”

“I’m not aggressive!” Alfor cried, squeezing Lance tighter.

“Can’t… breathe…” Lance choked out.

Alfor loosened up, but didn’t let Lance outside of touching-distance. He kept his arms loosely around Lance’s shoulders, looking over at Allura with big, watery eyes that reminded her of puppies pining after a toy that was taken away. She sighed, and realized that _no_ , she couldn’t convince him to leave that easily.

“What has that monster done to my poor boy?” Alfor whined. “A _concussion?_ ”

“That wasn’t exactly _Zarkon’s_ fault…” Allura started.

“The meteor shower that brought my soul to Earth caused human me to fall off a boulder and hit my head,” Lance deadpanned.

“Why are you siding with my evil half!” Alfor cried.

“He’s not half of you!” Allura yelled, indignantly as Alfor sniffed and nearly burst into tears. Allura put a hand to her head with a groan. “I’m not… _siding_ with _Zarkon_. Are you kidding me? Look, it’s nightfall, and if you stay here any longer—”

“I know, but… I missed my boy,” Alfor moaned, swaying Lance to and fro. “How’s your head feel? Are you doing all right?”

“I’m better now, thank you,” Lance reassured, blushing under the attention. He couldn’t remember a time Alfor doted on him so much. He never expected his father to even _bother_ coming to Earth just to see _him_. 

He never thought he was… _that_ important. 

“I had a chat with Coran about transferring you to the island,” Alfor said, pulling away slightly to see the glow on Lance’s face when he heard. Suddenly, the island seemed like a breath of fresh air. “You’ll be safe there while I deal with Zarkon.”

“Deal with— _Father_ , you can’t seriously—” Allura burst out, but Alfor lifted a hand to her, eyes on Lance’s giddy face.

“But you know the man—always chattering away. Talked my ear off doing it, but he’s going to work on it. He’s going to work on taking you there sometime soon. The paperwork just has to go through immigration and—”

“Paperwork? Immigration?” Allura groaned. “This is the demigod island we’re talking about! Don’t you get, like, top priority?”

“It’s different with Lance!” he whined, and Lance’s smile faded. He looked away with a scowl as Alfor turned on Allura, crying, “He’s fragile! He isn’t like _you_ , you big mean brute—he’s special cargo!”

“For Ancient’s sake—you’re gonna cause a storm with this! You’re upsetting Lance!”

“I told you! He’s _fra-gile_!” Alfor said, jabbing a finger in Allura’s direction as Lance moaned and flopped towards the couch. He landed on the cushions beside Sky, who seemed too terrified to even consider barking. Lance wrapped his arms around Sky, and buried his face in her soft, soft fur.

He forgot how annoying it was, dealing with his father. 

“I can see you don’t want me here _anyways_!” Alfor cried, throwing his arms down.

“ _Yes_ , because it’s _dangerous_ for _Lance!_ ”

“You don’t need to _remind me!_ I just wanted to see him! Look at him! He’s so perfect and afraid of living out here on his own, in the wilderness—”

“We’re literally in a house. There’s a roof over his head, and he’s literally not alone. He has a friend standing over there,” Allura yelled, thrusting her arms in Hunk’s direction, who was still swooning in the kitchen, frozen in place.

“So you’re saying he doesn’t need me, is that it?!” Alfor moaned.

Allura slapped her hands over her face, dragging them over her mouth to muffle her screams as Alfor whined and whined on his way to the door. He opened it and slumped through, and halfway down the steps, he dissolved like a fading memory—a fog of depression that was caught in the breeze and cleared away. Something clanked on the wooden porch, and Allura walked out to see what it was. 

The keys to the convertible, that was still sitting out on the street.

“You’ve _got_ to be kidding me. He must’ve stole it,” Allura moaned, slapping her hand to her head. She walked back inside to drop the key off beside Lance. “I’ve got to go take care of _that_ can of worms I just ripped open. Sorry about this, Lance, I should’ve… tried harder to prevent him from coming.”

“It’s okay…” he sighed, looking up from Sky’s fur. “Come back soon…”

“I’ll try,” she promised, and kissed him on the cheek before heading outside to let the lightning from their father’s storm zap her away.

Hunk kicked back into motion in the kitchen. “We should call her tonight and we can both share the good news! Lance?” he said, looking curiously over the counter to where Lance was moping on the couch. Hunk didn’t even acknowledge the fact that Allura was no longer there.

He rolled over onto his back and wondered why he let himself believe that his father truly cared about him. Sure, he came to Earth, but it wasn’t for the sake of seeing Lance. It was making sure he was okay, making sure he hadn’t hurt himself or gotten himself killed. Because Lance was weak, a minor god, hardly a god, useless, spineless, a child he needed to pamper and provide a soft, cushioned life. He felt like he was made of glass around his father most days, and the fact that he was human now made it all the more obvious.

He was high maintenance.

“Hey buddy, are you okay?” Hunk asked, head tipped to the side.

“I don’t feel well. I think I’m gonna try and nap,” Lance said, rolling up off the couch. 

“What about dinner-dessert?” Hunk asked, and Lance muttered something under his breath along the lines of, “Maybe later…”

He wandered to his bedroom door, and the moment he could, he nestled under the covers. 

He was instantly reminded of being in Keith’s bed such a short time before. He let himself be carried away by that soft smile… he wasn’t sure _what_ he pictured Kogane to look like, even human, but it certainly wasn’t the gentle man who made love to him that same day. 

Lance wrapped his arms around his head and groaned, trying to replace his image of Keith with his exaggerated imagination. Keith’s red eyes looked like snake eyes, with slitted pupils, white eyelashes, bleached white hair—nothing like the suave, black hair he tangled his fingers in and pulled on… He loved that black hair…

_No, shut up, you don’t—!_ Lance cried internally, clutching at his own hair. _His skin is actually fire! He doesn’t even have flesh! It’s just charred, gross muscle and maggots!_

Lance made the mistake of taking a nap just then. He managed to work himself up so much that exhaustion seeped in and knocked him out. Hunk came in with food, but abandoned the effort to let him sleep, and so he woke up that night to a dark room.

Alone.

In the dark.

Eyes wide open.

 

. . .

 

“We shouldn’t be this close to Lance’s house,” Acxa said, swinging her staff around from behind and jabbing the end of it on the rooftop. She leant against it, frowning pitifully at Keith. “Even if Lance can’t sense you, the corruptions can.”

“You saw the storm—they’re gonna be everywhere tonight. We can’t abandon him, even if he hates me,” Keith insisted, and didn’t speak after. He loathed to admit it out loud, and now that he had, the words hurt so much more. He pulled his knees up from where he had his legs dangling off the edge of the roof. He tucked his chin between his knees, and hugged his legs. He could feel his tears burning, splitting cracks through the charcoal skin around his eyes. 

Acxa turned away from him, swallowing hard. She hated to see him like this, and she was shit at comforting people. War and fighting was her strong suit—not interpersonal affairs. This whole situation with Lance just proved it.

She leapt off the roof and vaulted onto the next, closer to Lance’s house. Keith didn’t follow her—he didn’t even look up from his knees as she rubbed the rain water from her eyes and spotted the shadows between the alleys thickening. She glanced back at him and pointed her staff towards the corruption that was beginning to spawn.

He looked away, disinterested, and around the steam of the water evaporating from his head and shoulders, she caught a glimpse of his tears searing down his cheeks. 

She scowled, turning her anger towards the beast as its arms stretched out from the brick wall, and pushed itself forward. Her staff spun in her hands, and the end sharpened into a spear that she drew her hand over and sparked to life. She dropped down from the rooftop, thrusting her staff through its half-formed body in an easy, clean cut. 

The hardened shadow dissolved. 

She straightened from the ground and cleaned the shadow gunk off of her staff. A sound caught her attention, and she looked towards Lance’s house, certain that was the source. She heard Keith’s feet drop down beside her.

“Did you hear that?” she whispered, and it was immediately followed by a louder, more panicked cry of fright. “Is that—? I think it’s Lance.”

“I’ve got it,” he said sharply, heading towards the brick wall where the shadow emerged from. “He won’t even know I’m there,” he promised her, catching her concerned gaze.

“For your sake, I hope not,” she huffed, crossing her arms as she watched him disappear through the wall.

Keith pushed through the shadow portal, and stepped out with his sword already unsheathed. The room took form in a matter of half a second, expelling the darkness. It only emphasized the fact that nearly the entire known room was wrapped around a solid, blackened corruption spiraling in tangles around Lance’s bed. 

Lance was huddled under the covers, eyes squeezed shutas the darkness seeped in like poisonous smoke through the fabric.

Keith cut his sword through the nearest shadow, and it sparked a chain reaction that sent the shadow recoiling, and dissolving bit-by-bit. The tangles broke away around Lance’s covers, but Keith sensed the ones under the bed, hidden in the closets, feeding off of Lance’s fear that only accumulated by the second.

He tore Lance’s covers off. He shook his hand out and donned a glove that he grabbed Lance’s wrist with, and pulled him up off the bed. 

“Allura—?” Lance cried, voice shaking as Keith’s eyes widened at the sight of black tendrils crawling to fill the gap where Lance’s body once was. 

He sunk his sword through the mattress, aware that it would only cut what needed to be cut. The corruptions jolted away, and fizzled out. 

“Turn on a light,” Keith demanded in a hiss, raising his sword back up to ready for whatever else might come out in the light.

Lance hurried to the door and flipped the switch. 

The remaining corruptions screamed, and it sounded like shrill mice shrieking under the heat of a lit match. Keith swung his hand out at the closet door, and it ripped open. The clothes were entirely engulfed in a phantom that he speared before it could escape. 

He shut the closet door—a little too forcefully—and watched Lance jump in the corner of his eye. He glanced at Lance, who paled and pointed shakily across the room.

“Under the bed,” he whispered. 

Keith didn’t waste a second.

He got down on his knees and looked, and with one jolt of his hand, the monster beneath it ruptured without needing a knife. The smoke of it dissolved out from beneath the bed as Keith stood up, sheathing his sword and heading for the closet again. 

“Wait,” Lance squeaked, and clasped his hands over his mouth the moment Keith looked at him. 

Keith cringed, folding in on himself as Lance continued to stare at him. He looked away, hand twisting on the closet door handle. He could only imagine what Lance was seeing now—he was nothing more than a demon, like the ones that worked in his Forests. Monsters from children’s stories, meant to scare them away from temptation and Hell.

His face burned even more than before, and it wasn’t until Lance said something that he realized he was crying.

“Is… that what your tears look like?” Lance asked, stepping closer.

Keith hurriedly rubbed a hand over them, but they just burned straight through the protective gloves he had on, to keep from burning Lance’s human skin.

Lance reached up to touch his cheek.

“Don’t —it’ll burn you. It’s… kind of like lava, I guess,” Keith said, sniffing as he turned away. “I’m sorry—I—” he broke off, already pushing through the shadow portal in Lance’s closet.

He stumbled out the other side, crashing into Acxa in a panic. They fell against the wall together as Keith slumped forward, hands over his face as he groaned. “He saw me. He fucking saw me,” he moaned, and collapsed on the floor before Acxa could even think to stop him. “I probably look like a fucking monster to him…”

With night being a thing, and the fact that night was essentially the Earth cast in one massive shadow, it meant that Keith fell straight through the ground and reemerged in their hotel room. He hadn’t meant to, and so he wound up stuck under the bed until he shadow-portaled elsewhere. 

Meanwhile, Lance was in his bedroom experiencing a momentary existential crises over the fact that _yes_ , it was _definitely_ possible to fall in love with demons, especially ones as good-looking as Keith, and ones as caring as Keith.

Maybe Lance had a thing for fire, because _damn_ , was he burning up. 

He collapsed face-first on his bed and let out a small scream of frustration. _Damn me, for being so weak._


	13. free passage

Lance was awake before Hunk, for once. He was still so paranoid about the corruptions, and ever since his father stopped by, he started to notice them, even the benign ones. They sat in the shadows as morning came, and the storm had yet to let up. He watched Hunk use a pair of wooden tongs to take out the toast, and behind him, nestled between the refrigerator and the wall, sat a phantom too timid to attack. 

_It’s practically night considering how dark the storm is_ , Lance told himself as he licked at the peanut butter Hunk put on his toast. 

“I thought I heard you shouting in your room last night,” Hunk commented. “Nightmares?”

“Yeah, something like that,” he sighed. “I’m still so _tired_. I couldn’t sleep after.”

“You coulda came to my room. I don’t mind,” Hunk said, and offered an innocent smile that had Lance’s cheeks flushing. But going to Hunk’s room meant passing through the dark living room, walking down the dark hallway, and entering a corruption infestation. There were more than usual around, and they were clingy, even if they all had their eyes closed. 

“Um… no, I’m okay in my room,” Lance said. “I appreciate the offer though.”

Hunk shrugged and wandered around the counter to sit beside Lance. They ate in silence, and Lance couldn’t even make himself look at Hunk. He felt guilty for having all of these feelings, like he was throwing them around haphazardly. They were starting to break and show cracks, and he was sure Hunk could see it. 

He bit into his jelly toast and closed his eyes, resting his head on his hand. The act seemed so… _familiar_ , and the deja vu had him blinking his eyes wide awake again.

A spike of pain shot through his eyes, and it felt like a needle was pierced through his pupil to his retina. He hissed, clutching at his head as the sight of Hunk came walking out from his designated bedroom, fresh and alive, and so unlike how Lance felt now. 

“ _Don’t you just love it?! God, I feel like an actual adult for once_ ,” Hunk said, and Lance tried to glance at where he knew Hunk was sitting, but he couldn’t. 

He couldn’t change the course of events at all, and said without hesitation. “ _Yes! Finally! My own bachelor pad with my own best bachelor_.” He shot Hunk finger-guns, and Hunk clutched at his heart with a dramatic swoon. 

“Hey, bud, you okay?” Hunk’s voice cut through the memory, and Lance realized that he was seeing the world fuzzy around the edges until then. He blinked, and looked frantically towards Hunk, desperate for something grounding. 

He clutched at Hunk’s arm and said, “I think… I think I just remembered the time you and I… first moved in?”

Hunk stared at him, and then gasped in excitement. “Really?! What a religious experience—tell me about it!”

Lance raised an eyebrow at him and laughed, “What the fuck—you were _there!_ Weren’t you? Or was that just some figment of my imagination?” 

“I don’t care, I wanna hear about it anyways,” Hunk insisted, and Lance felt giddy from the momentary excitement he felt at acclimating to his old life again.

Even though this wasn’t his life, he lived it like it was, and told the story like Hunk wanted him to. As soon as he skimmed over the meager details he vividly recalled, he started to talk about things that came as he went. He remembered how he had to take the toaster out of the box to even _make_ toast, and how Hunk looked in the refrigerator and suggested they make their first task grocery shopping. He remembered how they hopped in Hunk’s car and drove off, excited to start their new life in their new house—Lance, away from home, and Hunk, out of his parents’ house.

After saying it all, Lance clutched at his head with a sense of bewilderment at knowing all that. Hunk hugged him, squeezing him around the shoulders, and insisted, “Tell me _whenever_ you remember something, all right? Because I want to hear it all. I don’t care how small you think it is, okay?”

“O-Okay,” Lance stammered, smiling weakly at him.

“Good. Now finish up so I can drive you to Shaylin.”

The name struck something at Lance’s surface, stirring the gunk that had lifted when he remembered his human counterpart’s memories. _Shaylin_. The goddess? No, Hunk was talking about the adventure resort.

“Why are we going there?” Lance asked.

“Ezor told me she could start showing you the ropes again. And you’ve been gloomy all night… but I figured you should still go,” Hunk insisted, and glanced hesitantly at Lance before adding, “To take your mind off things. And since it’s raining, Ezor’s gonna be bored out of her mind sitting around the front desk.”

Lance’s mind churned, and he put a hand to his forehead and stared at his toast in distaste. Why was he still remembering things from his human life? He didn’t… _Did_ he want to be human? Did something deep inside him want this life? 

He glanced at Hunk again before deciding that, perhaps, maybe he did. 

Still, even as he changed and hopped into Hunk’s car for the drive to Altea, he couldn’t stop thinking of—

Keith.

When they pulled out of the driveway, Lance turned his eyes skyward, and caught sight of two figures standing on a nearby rooftop. He stared at them, and twisted around even as the car turned away. He recognized that ember glow from Keith’s cheeks the night before, but it was so much more prominent now on his exposed arms, twisted in fractured, metallic sleeves that raised like claws around his shoulder armor. He didn’t entirely recognize the woman with him, but Lance could only assume that it was Acxa.

He was going to see Ezor.

_Shit, how am I going to keep my mouth shut about this?_ Lance moaned internally, and wondered, briefly, if Ezor had as bad of a date as _he_ did.

He looked down at his lap, blushing furiously. So… Keith believed that they had a relationship before? Lance couldn’t imagine even his godhood could withstand Keith’s incessantly burning skin. He looked at his soft, fleshy, human hands and sighed. He clenched his fists.

_Stop this. Stop thinking about him_ , Lance begged himself, but he couldn’t seem to stop. As soon as the idea came to him, the memory of Keith’s tears resurfaced. Tears, from a god of death, from a son of _Zarkon_.

“You okay there?” Hunk asked, and Lance unclenched his fists and looked up. The windshield was washed out with water, but he could see that they had arrived. 

Lance looked at Hunk, who seemed far more concerned than he had been before. Lance looked away, trying to push back the heat swelling behind his eyes. “I’m fine,” he said, but his voice felt tight in his throat.

Hunk sighed from beside him, and reached across the console to clasp his hand over Lance’s wrist. “Hey, buddy, I know… You don’t remember _everything_ , but… I’ve always been there for you? And you can trust me. Did… something happen with you and Keith?” he asked.

Hunk knew just how to twist the truth out.

Lance bit his lip, and wished he could pull his boots up onto the seat so he could hug his legs and tuck his face between his knees. Instead, he let out a shaky sigh and nodded. 

“What happened, buddy?” Hunk asked, squeezing Lance’s wrist. He looked down at Hunk’s soft, brown hand, and how his palms were lighter, and pinker than the rest. 

“I don’t… I don’t know…” he confessed, face tense as he tried not to burst into tears. “He just… wasn’t who I thought he was. Can we leave it at that?”

“Yeah, of course,” Hunk said, nodding quickly. “Just let me know if I need to beat up anybody.”

“Thanks,” Lance said, smiling a little, _for the sentiment, because I’m sure Keith Kogane could tear through you in an instant_.

Lance stepped out into the rain with the umbrella he used to get in the car in the first place. He hurried out with a wave to Hunk, and scurried to the front door of the resort. Under the canopy, he nudged the door open with his foot and shut the umbrella. He could already feel the rain soaking his back before he slid inside and shook out his hair.

“Lance!” Ezor cried from across the room. Lance looked up and beamed, thrilled to see such a happy face. “It’s really comin’ down out there, huh? You’re soaked!”

“Yeah, but Hunk drove me so it could be worse,” he said, trudging over with squeaky boots. He stopped at the counter where Ezor hurried over to drag him behind it. From there, they found his card and swiped him in. 

And thus commenced a day of actual work. 

 

. . .

 

“There’s still corruptions around,” Acxa said, her worry stressed by the tension in her brow as she spun her staff and stabbed the spear end through another shadow growing from the alley between the Shaylin Adventure Resort and a neighboring restaurant. “Shouldn’t they technically be gone when the sun comes up, even if it’s cloudy?”

“I sensed something lingering in Lance’s house,” Keith said, turning back to her from where he had been staring at the resort. “My guess is that Alfor paid a visit.”

A shudder went down Acxa’s spine, and she distracted her horror with turning to kill another phantom skittering across the concrete. It was small and harmless, but it didn’t hurt to kill it. 

“So… you think _this_ is all because of Alfor?” Acxa said, stretching her arms around. Keith shrugged. “That’s insane! He isn’t stupid enough to—”

They both reconsidered it. Yes, perhaps Alfor _was_ idiotic enough to endanger his “beloved son” like this.

“Regardless, the power imprint he left was stronger than Allura’s. My guess is that Lance will be sleeping with the lights on tonight,” Keith said.

Acxa watched him as he returned to his post. She knew she wasn’t the only one to see Lance look back at them on his way to the resort. She knew it was hopeless trying to convince Keith that he still had a chance, and she couldn’t bear to try—not when his heart was so fragile now. And if she was wrong… she was certain the effect would be devastating on Keith. He’d never live the same way again, and he’d have an eternity to mourn over it.

She twisted her hands around the golden etchings on her staff before muttering under her breath that she’d check out the areas around. She leapt off and spun onto the nearest rooftop. At the edge of the next roof, she threw her weight forward, and bounded off of her hands back to her feet several doors down from where she left Keith. She felt awful for everything that happened to him, and decided that she couldn’t see the same thing happen to Ezor. 

_You started this. You need to stop drifting_ , she told herself. 

After several hours, Ezor’s shift was over with, and so Lance clocked out as well. He spent that entire several hours listening to her rant about her new girlfriend, and Lance couldn’t even imagine the look on his face, realizing that Ezor was dating a goddess of war without batting an eye. Lance put his hands over his head as they stood out under the awning while Ezor swooned, “But could you _imagine?_ We could move back to Australia and live in a fancy apartment because she could totally afford it!”

“Uh, yeah, I mean… I guess? Why not?” Lance said, laughing nervously as he looked at his phone and texted Hunk, _Save me! Where are you?!_

Thankfully, Hunk’s headlights cut through the rain in the next minute, and he pulled up beside them on the curb. Ezor called shotgun, and so Lance crawled into the back and tried not to lose his mind as she restarted the entire story of her date with Acxa for Hunk’s sake. Hunk caught sight of Lance’s annoyance in the rearview mirror, and recommended they blast Beyoncé instead.

That was how they wound up singing _Single Ladies_ down the country roads twisting back to their town. Acxa and Keith followed close behind, tracking the shadows that filled in the road behind their car when their headlights were too far off to cast them away. Keith dropped onto the asphalt and cut his sword through the lot of them, twisting it over his head and slamming it down through the ground, pinning a corruption to it without a second thought.

It burst into black smoke that curled up to the darkened sky. He looked towards Acxa, who threw her spear into a large, wolf-shaped phantom lunging after Hunk’s car. 

Lightning bolted through the dense rain, and struck the road in brilliant white sparks that lifted to accumulate in the hair of their newest guest. Allura blinked at them, all gathered in the middle of the road among all the pine trees that looked _nothing_ like Keith’s Forest. He was starting to miss it.

“What are you all doing out here?” Allura asked, and lifted a hand to cast an invisible umbrella over them. Acxa sighed, free from the rain, while Keith didn’t notice a difference. He was practically made of steam now.

“Corruptions fucking attacked Lance last night. I imagine it’s a mixture of _your_ stupidity for letting your _father_ barge in!” Keith spat at her, swing his sword back into its scabbard with a scoff. “And also the fact that they’re attracted to raw emotion. Humans in general, really.”

“The fact that _you_ lost control doesn’t help that whole situation, does it?” Allura deadpanned. “If anything, I’ve been trying to _keep_ my father from visiting Lance. Every time I’ve brought up sending Lance away, he begs to see him! It was only a matter of time!”

“Still, this doesn’t help the situation at all,” Acxa said. “It’s the middle of the fucking day, and there’s corruptions all over the damn place! We’ve been slaying them all day—where have _you_ been?!”

“Dealing with my father!” she moaned, slapping her hands to her head. “He’s completely mental! He’s trying to convince me to let him move in with Lance!”

“Oh, yeah, no, that can _not_ happen,” Acxa said. She snapped her fingers, and her golden staff materialized in her hands. 

“He’s been spawning moving boxes ever since I got him back to Homerealm,” Allura groaned. “Because apparently that’s what ‘humans do.’”

“Fuck me, why’s your family more fucked up than mine?” Keith said, and earned a glare for it. “Granted, my father turned my boyfriend mortal, so…”

“Thanks for _reminding me_ to _hate your father_ ,” Allura hissed, and a jolt of lightning sent her disappearing and reappearing where the next bit of lightning struck closer to Lance’s house. 

Keith sighed and grabbed Acxa by the hand, and dragged her down into the shadow portals that were more plentiful with the clouds blocking the sun. It was the entire reason why the corruptions were all over the place now—they spawned from shadow portals, and existed in that in-between realm ever since they broke free from Zarkon’s chains. They were illusive and difficult to keep ahold of. If Zarkon stopped shadow portal transportation entirely, then that would hinder the inner workings of the Underworld until they day all corruption were dealt with all at once.

They jumped out onto one of the neighbor’s lawns, and watched from afar as Allura, dressed in her glamour, walked up the steps of the porch and knocked on the front door of Lance’s house. Keith unknowingly clenched his fists, annoyed that she could make the act seem so easy. It seemed like more than just a day had gone by from the last time he knocked on Lance’s door without worrying he’d be turned away.

Later, when Allura emerged from the house with an umbrella over her head, she hurried down the street to where Acxa and Keith were lounging on a rooftop, watching over Lance’s house. Allura waved up at them, and Keith grudgingly dropped down to meet her.

“I think Hunk knows something happened between you two. He thinks you guys went through a breakup or something,” Allura said.

“That’s because we did,” Keith hissed through clenched teeth. “Did you come out here just to say that?”

“No, um, actually… Lance wants to talk to you,” she said. “You’ll have to put a glamour on, at least until the two of you are alone.”

“Why… Why does he want to talk to me?” Keith asked, eyes widening as Acxa dropped down beside him.

Allura shrugged, looking tense and worried in every sense of the word. She clasped her hands together beneath her chin and looked at Acxa, who sighed and said, “Okay, I’ll get him all spruced up. Tell Lance he’ll be there in a bit.”

“Okay, I’ll let him know,” she promised, and ran off, back through the rain across the road. 

The droplets bounced off the asphalt and created a spray that seemed to linger like fog around their legs as Acxa clasped her hands over Keith’s shoulders and said, “You know what to do, and don’t make a fuss about it. You don’t have to hold it forever.”

Keith rolled his head back and groaned, “Don’t patronize me.”

It took approximately fifteen minutes for Acxa to squeeze Keith’s godhood into something capable of being tamed. Or, more accurately, shredded off the surface and replaced with the humanlike qualities that Lance would recognize. Skin that didn’t burn, eyes that didn’t glow, and teeth that wouldn’t tear his soft human lips. 

He poked at his flattened canines and licked at them until they were standing on the porch, preparing to knock on the door. “Ladies first,” he said, gesturing to Acxa.

“Fuck off—this is your little meet-up, don’t drag me into it,” she huffed, crossing her arms. Keith rolled his eyes and reached forward, hesitantly. He stopped a few inches away from the door and pulled his hand back. “For fuck’s sake—”

Acxa took his wrist and heft it up against his will. She hammered on the door with his hand before dropping it and flashing Keith a peace sign. He sneered at her as she ran off and disappeared into the rain, bounding up to the nearest rooftop as the front door opened to him.

He was prepared to see Lance, but instead, he was met with Lance’s human companion—Hunk. Hunk stared at him for a moment, blocking the entry with his broad shoulders and wide stance. Eventually, he narrowed his eyes.

“Are you here for Lance?” Hunk asked.

“Um… yeah…” Keith said, raising an eyebrow at Hunk. “He’s here, isn’t he?”

Hunk leant against the doorframe and shrugged. “Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t.”

Keith sighed, crossing his arms as he said, “Look—Lance asked to see me so I’m just gonna…” He squeezed between Hunk and the half-closed door. Hunk watched him all the way, not offering any help even as Keith skidded onto the carpet and had to catch his balance on the nearby closet door. It rattled, and the noise prompted Lance’s bedroom door to open.

Lance hurried out and grabbed Keith by the arm. He shoved Keith forcefully towards the bedroom door, saying, “Thanks for answering the door, Hunk! We’ll be out in just a second!”

“Call if you need anything,” Hunk said, shutting the front door as he turned to glare daggers at Keith before the bedroom door shut between them.

Keith flinched a little, and glanced worriedly at Lance, who seemed out of breath and more flustered than anything. Allura was lounging across Lance’s bed, and waved amiably at Keith before sitting up. Lance walked over to her, hands in his hair. 

“I- I don’t know where to start,” Lance stammered, turning on Keith to jab a finger at him. “You broke into my _room_ last night!”

“You were being attacked!” Keith squeaked. “There were corruptions all over the place! I had to do something—”

“ _Why_! Why did you do _anything?!_ You don’t _actually_ care about me, do you?” Lance spat at him, and Keith’s mouth fell open before he looked sharply at Allura. 

She shrugged and said, “I mean, that’s what I thought. You’re a son of Zarkon, AKA the most negative man in the universe. As if any of his sons would be capable of _feeling_ anything.”

“Takashi’s a vortex of emotions,” Keith spat at her. “You were dumb enough to fall for it, fish guts.”

Allura’s jaw dropped, and he stuck his tongue out at her. Lance stared at him, and he suddenly realized who he was talking with. Keith apologized weakly, rubbing his hand over his hair with a sigh. “I have to agree with the vortex of emotions, but… _damn_ ,” Allura said with a hollow laugh. She stood up.

“Wait, Allura—” Lance said, trying to hold onto her arm, but she was already walking to the door.

“I’m gonna talk to Acxa—I won’t be far,” she promised, and shut the door behind her. Lance slumped against it before turning his glare to Keith, who looked horrified for having said those things.

“Sorry, it’s just—I’m used to talking like that around you. It’s… weird having to censor myself,” he confessed.

“What do you mean?” Lance said, scowling. 

“When you… came to the Underworld, you just sort of… lingered around. For the most part you just _watched me_ and once we started talking, I figured you didn’t want to be treated like a child,” Keith said. “Because everything back in Homerealm was basically just… Alfor trying to protect you from shit, and Allura doting on you.”

Lance narrowed his eyes at Keith. “How do you know that.”

“You told me! Eventually,” Keith said, and backtracked to all the time Lance spent talking with his guards. He pinched his fingers over the bridge of his nose. “Well, I introduced you to all of my guards, which are basically just… marbled sculptures that don’t talk, and so you talked to them for a while. But I never told you that I hear everything they do. I waited until you actually wanted to talk to me, you know?”

“So… what is it that you _do_ in the Underworld?” Lance asked.

“I bring new souls to the Underworld,” he said. “Human ones, mostly, and they all grow in the Forest. I found you there, trying to take the bark off of a new soul.”

“Really?” Lance said, laughing. “What was I doing there?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know how you got into the Underworld to begin with,” he confessed, pacing away from Lance as he sighed, “My father just assumed that I had kidnapped you or something, because that’s the only _logical_ explanation. It’s hard to believe that anything, even a minor god, could break into the Underworld. Because if we let people come and go, they could wreck… _so_ much havoc. You have no _idea_.”

He laughed at the idea, and how innocent Lance was, singing on the tree branch, trying to free a soul.

Lance fiddled with the door hinge before moving away from that corner, and closer to the bed where Keith was standing. He sat on the comforter, looking down as he said, quietly, “Could I see you without your glamour again?”

Keith blinked at him, but Lance wouldn’t look up to see his shock. After a moment, he cleared his throat, cheeks flushed as he turned away. “It’s difficult for me to make glamours on my own. I never had to before now,” he explained. “If I break my glamour now, I’d have to wait until Allura comes back to rebuild it.”

“I don’t care—I want to see you,” he demanded, and Keith couldn’t say no to that.

He let himself release the form Acxa stuffed his godhood in, and let it materialize over himself once more. His mortal clothes vanished, and were replaced by the dark black cape he used for impromptu portal jumps. His boots climbed up to his thighs, and his waist was adorned with his scabbard again. He brushed his hands over his wrists, and pulled gloves over them so he wouldn’t have to worry about burning Lance.

Lance stared at him the entire time, until Keith’s eyes glinted red when they glanced at him. A shiver ran up Lance’s spin, and he jolted up to his feet because of it. He reached out and plucked at Keith’s cloak, and at the clawed sleeves on his biceps. He poked at Keith’s chest plate armor, and ended with his hands resting over Keith’s. 

“I… don’t know why, but…” Lance started, voice shaking as he wondered why his deja vu was setting in again. 

Before he could be assaulted by another jolt of pain, he was instead drawn to the darkness rising through Keith’s cloak and sending it shuddering around them. The shadows merged with all corners of the room, and the lights overhead cracked, and burnt out. The room was cast in darkness.

“What’s happening?” Lance squeaked, shrieking when Keith pushed him away and reached for his sword. 

“ _Shit_ ,” Keith hissed, slicing through the phantom behind him. He cut through the air in a hiss of embers fizzling around them. They whispered through the air like dandelion fuzz, and Lance batted one away before it could cling to his shirt and burn through.

“Sorry, I—” Keith started, but was interrupted by a sharp, rattling hiss rising out from beneath Lance’s bed. 

Lance shrieked in terror, scrambling away from it, only to run into another, and another—

Keith grabbed him and spun him into his chest. Lance clung to the sharp edges of Keith’s armor as he cut his sword through the phantoms clawing at Lance’s heels. Eventually, the world seemed fine again. Lance felt a sigh of relief past through Keith, and how the arm over his shoulders relaxed. Lance shivered in the warmth of Keith’s arms, despite how it burned.

“I think that’s all of—”

“ _Lance!_ Lance, I heard you screaming and I—” Hunk exploded through the door, causing them both to jump. “The lights went out and—”

Hunk skidded to a halt in the doorway, staring wide-eyed at Keith, and then at Lance, who looked at him with teary eyes. He was almost too relieved to speak, at least until he realized that _the lights went out because of the storm_.

“Shit,” Keith hissed, swinging his hand out towards the closet door where Lance had once kept the lights on. Hunk screamed like an infant straight out of the womb as a blob of blackness seeped across the floor, sludgy and opaque. 

“Ew, ew, ew, what is happening?!” Hunk cried, running to Lance, who was still clinging to Keith. Keith growled under his breath, cut between two panicking humans whilst in the middle of trying to fight the phantoms.

One tangled around Lance’s leg, and Hunk shrieked and stomped his foot on it before kicking it across the room. “ _Holy shit!_ Holy shit! Oh my God!” Hunk screamed, kicking another, and another, to keep them off of Lance while Keith tried desperately to cut around them.

“Calm— _down!_ ” Keith seethed, forcing Hunk and Lance back on the bed. They swung over the covers with a cry, and Lance clung to Hunk’s arms as Keith thrust his sword through the solid mass of darkness colliding across the room. 

“I think I’m gonna pass out,” Hunk gasped, hands on his head. Lance looked over at him just as something yanked him off the bed.

“ _Hunk!_ ” Lance shrieked as Hunk toppled onto the carpet writhing with corruptions. Hunk was screaming so loud that Lance couldn’t talk over it, or even scream himself as he watched a phantom claw into Hunk’s mouth, and duck inside.

Keith stabbed his sword through the carpet, and the corruption was sucked back out of Hunk’s mouth in the form of smoke rising. Hunk remained frozen on the ground, eyes on the ceiling, mouth wide open.

The lights came on.

Keith let out a shuddering breath, and looked up from Hunk to see Lance staring down at him, hands clasped over his mouth. After a moment, Lance scrambled off the bed, and Keith managed to say, “I don’t think—” before silencing himself.

Lance put a hand to Hunk’s face, and patted him down to his chest before pressing his ear there. He stared at Keith’s boots as he waited to hear the sound of a human heart. A moment later, Lance sat up in confusion.

“What happened—Why isn’t he moving?” he asked, tears springing to his eyes. “I can’t hear his heart!” 

“Lance, I—”

“ _Do something!_ ” Lance screamed, throwing his hands down on Hunk’s stiff chest. 

Keith flinched when he heard the front door swing open and hit the wall. In an instant, the bedroom door swung open, and Allura cried, “We saw the lights go out a- and I heard—”

Lance looked at her with watery eyes. His tears spilled over and pooled in think droplets off of his chin. Keith’s insides twisted at the sight, and he could barely say anything aside from, “A corruption got inside of him before I could stop it. When the lights went out, they just… multiplied.”

Allura ran in to pull Lance off of Hunk’s body, but Lance clung to him, weeping so hard Keith was surprised his voice didn’t die with Hunk. Acxa stepped in hesitantly as Allura restrained Lance as best she could, but it wasn’t enough.

“ _No!_ Let me _go!_ ” Lance roared, kicking his legs out.

Keith couldn’t stop himself from how he stared, bewildered by the reaction he never had to see. He never had to directly _see_ people die, but he knew humans were fragile. He _knew_ their equilibrium could be shattered in an instant. He just… never expected to witness it firsthand outside of the “divine intervention” he observed through Acxa overseeing World Wars. He never had to pick up souls directly from the surface of whatever planet they expired on, so he wasn’t prepared to see the way Hunk’s life-force sunk through the carpet like black sludge, and disappear into the earth. 

Hunk’s skin began to turn clammy and pale.

“Bring him _back!_ ” Lance snarled at him. Keith looked up sharply, and now that the idea was said aloud, his insides froze over and frosted. Acxa watched him, horrified. “He shouldn’t have to die! He shouldn’t have died!”

“You don’t—You don’t understand, I’m just… I just see souls through their maturity, I never—I couldn’t—” _I’ve never done that before_ , he thought. One of the many reasons he was the Guardian of the Forest was to prevent this sort of thing from happening—to prevent people from storming in to bring their loved ones back to the surface.

“You could do it,” Allura said, stilling in her fight to hold Lance back. Lance lunged forward, thrown off balance until Keith reached an arm out to steady him. “I agree with Lance—this was because of us. We shouldn’t be intervening, but we did anyways.”

“No—absolutely not,” Acxa said, shaking her head hurriedly. “Keith, you know as well as I do that your father will do worse than turn Lance mortal if he hears about this. It’s one thing if he decapitates you again, but now Lance’s life is on the line.”

She jabbed her staff in the direction of the scars on Keith’s neck. He reached a hand up to cover it when Lance looked over to see. Keith scowled at Acxa, and then at Allura, and then down at Lance. 

“Don’t follow me, Acxa” he hissed at her. “If I’m going to do this, it’s easier to do it alone. I’ll have to talk to Pidge again… and have her return me back to the second after Hunk died so I can return his soul. He’s already got brain damage now for his soul being gone so long.”

“I could talk to Pidge,” Acxa said. “She doesn’t mind me as much as she does you. What are you going to give her, though?”

“I’ve already given her everything she ever wanted just getting here,” Keith bit out, infuriated by the reminder. “She won’t need anything else. Trust me.”

Acxa gave him one last, uncertain glance before dissolving into the air. The moment she was gone, Allura asked, “What did you give Pidge?”

Keith ground his teeth together and turned away from them. “Free passage through the Underworld. I’ll pay the consequences later, I’m sure.”

Allura’s jaw dropped, and Lance stared with those wide, blue eyes in absolute wonder. “That means—If anyone’s willing to pay the price—”

“ _Yes_ , she’ll be able to bring messages out of the Underworld. She’s never liked the delivery business, but… being a conduit for the dead to speak with people on the surface…”

“You’re kidding,” Lance gasped. “Please tell me you’re—”

Keith pulled his cloak aside, and cast the shadow portal from it onto the wall. He hurried towards it before he could hear whatever the hell else they wanted to badger him with. He hated to lament on the wish he granted for Pidge, but it was too late to take it back, especially now. He’d have to deal with his father in that regard, but Zarkon only had himself to blame. Keith was just using his resources.

He pushed a foot through the portal, and headed in just as something tugged on his cloak. He looked back the moment Lance screamed, “Wait!” against the portal’s gravity. Keith was forced through, along with Lance still clinging to his cloak. Lance crashed into his back, and it sent them both spiraling through the darkness towards the exit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's implied that, if you blended Pidge's background in Voltron with this AU, that Pidge used to be mortal and had family members who passed away. She likely passed away as well, but her heroism caught Coran's eye and she became a goddess. She just wants to see her fam again :O


	14. perfect for each other

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GAH sorry for the delay with posting this. School just smacked me over the head and shoved my face into a textbook.

Keith screamed as he flew through the other end, clutching Lance to him so when they hit the ground, Keith took the impact. Keith sat up in an instant, staring up at the portals that still lingered around the nonexistent foyer of his estate.

“What do you mean you did that for me!?” Lance screamed, coughing on the ground before realizing that something was wrapped around his leg and climbing higher—a phantom.

“ _Shit!_ Why did you—?” Keith yelled, swinging his sword so he could disconnect the portal phantom from Lance’s leg. He may have severed the ties, but the dam was broken.

Lance screamed, scrambling to his feet as Keith grabbed him by the hand. He’d never seen this place before, but as soon as his eyes landed on the chalky white bark of the nearby trees, deja vu had him stumbling forward, clinging to Keith’s arm in a desperate attempt to stabilize himself. His eyes went skyward, and was alarmed to find the clear blue sky washed over in red and black.

They took off towards the forest, where Keith pushed him onto the path, yelling, “ _Run!_ Get as far away from the portal as you can!”

“What? Why?!” Lance screamed, and yelped when he realized that the portal corruption was only doubling, tripling in size. 

“Corruptions spawn from the shadow portals—put a human in it, and it’s just like bait!” Keith cried, and watched realization dawn on Lance’s face. He hadn’t even realized that they went through a portal until now, or even that they were in the Underworld. “Now go! I’ll find you, just—”

The corruption released a ear-splitting cry that rattled Lance’s insides like a hammer striking a gong. He turned on his heels and took off running, cursing under his breath the entire way. The Forest loomed around him, twisting and bubbling in his vision as he ran past knots in the barks of trees shaped like human faces. He could hear the corruptions chasing after him, the scratchy, metallic sound of their voices grating against his ears as he followed the path around a bend, and—

The road broke out from under him.

He skidded over the edge with a cry, and when he turned to grab hold of something, he saw the shadows churning high overhead, merging with the dark, reddish hue of the sky. He landed at the bottom of the ravine, water splashing up around him as the phantoms moaned from overhead, unable to comprehend the lack of ground before them.

Lance slumped on the ground, disoriented. His head felt fuzzy and light, and it wasn’t until he stood up that he realized why.

His body didn’t hurt anymore. 

His feet touched the water, and something coursed through him, like a ripple of energy that left him feeling better than ever. He lifted his arms up, and the water went with them. 

“ _Gods_ , it’s been a while,” he breathed, laughing with relief as he clenched his fists and shook water out from his fingertips. “Time to _kickass_ ,” he roared, and ran back towards the edge of the ravine. 

He grabbed the nearest white branch protruding from a tree on the side of the rock face. He heaved himself up, and jumped to the next tree, climbing hastily up to the ledge where the corruptions were waiting for him. He pictured Hunk’s face as it lost color, and it didn’t take anything for him to clasp his hands together, and summon water from the palm of his hand. It crystalized inch by inch into the shape of a sword, freezing over until he had a usable weapon in his hand that cut through the corruptions without wasting a second.

Each cut with his sword cast a spray of frozen water splitting from its surface. It pierced the nearby corruptions to the trees before they burst into clouds of smoke. Lance twisted his sword around and braced for another attack, but instead, they started to flee as if caught in the wave of the phantom rising above the trees. They began to float overhead, gravitating towards the massive, monstrous corruption as it searched for a human that was no longer there.

“ _Keith_!” Lance yelled, sprinting through the Forest, towards the base of the monster. Darkness washed over the trees, and the light vanished just long enough for him to panic. There wasn’t a sun here. All of the light was being consumed and thrust towards the black hole that became of the corruptions.

Lance gasped in fright, hands twisting around the pommel of his sword. “ _KEITH_!” he screamed in a panic, unable to move without the light to show him where to go.

He started to picture the Forest again, in ways he shouldn’t. The memories flooded, the cap undone, and in a matter of seconds he visualized all the time he spent in the Forest, happy to talk to any trapped soul in the trees who wanted to listen. He spent so much time exploring, that he knew exactly where the ravine was and how to get back.

He started at a slow walk, arms out, when he didn’t touch a single tree, he began to jog, and then run, turning where the path turned. He kept the pebbles under his feet as he raced down the path back to Keith’s estate. Lance ran into something solid, and at first thought it was Keith, but that familiar hissing _definitely_ was not him.

He sliced his sword through it without hesitation, and it broke way to the momentary image of fire sparking from each thrust of Keith’s swords. 

“Keith!” Lance cried, but his image of Keith closed up. He thrashed his sword frantically through it, and pushed himself through with a cry, falling on the ground when the phantom grabbed his legs. He twisted round and sliced through the darkness, accidentally nicking himself in the process. 

“Lance! You shouldn’t be here—”

“The entire Forest is pitch black—I didn’t know where else to go,” he insisted, and stopped at the sight of Keith staring at him, and then down at the icy sword. Realizing the situation, Lance ran forward, and swung his arms around Keith’s neck. 

“I’m so sorry for forgetting! I was such an idiot, I won’t do that to you ever again,” he cried, squeezing Keith as tightly as he could. “I love you so much, okay? You know that, right?”

“Yeah, but—now _really_ isn’t the time for that,” Keith said, dodging the phantoms that came crashing down over them. Lance dropped down and ran beside him, cutting his sword through the wall he burst in through, but there was nothing on the other side. Just pure black corruption. 

“What do we do? What the hell is happening anyways?” Lance said, breathing hard as he turned and sliced through the corruptions closing in on them. They were trapped in a bubble of them.

“It looks as though all the corruptions in the portals followed you through it, and with the portal unblocked—they just keep coming,” Keith explained.

Lance stared at him before blinking and turning away, thinking hard. How was it possible to fight one large corruption? Granted, usually all it took was one spear through the chest or the head, but this was different. No matter how much they cut at it, only parts of it broke off into smoke, if at all. 

“The ravine,” Lance said, gasping. “I need more water. If I could make a big enough spear, do you think you could vault it into the phantom?”

“I- I don’t know—it’s worth a shot,” Keith said. “My fire isn’t doing anything. They don’t burn at all.”

“Help me cut through to the other side. The path’s this way,” Lance ordered, slicing through the darkness and prying it open with Keith’s help. 

They pushed through to the other side of the bubble, and Keith grabbed Lance by the hand. The floor dropped out from under them, and in the next moment, they were drenched with water from the portal opening in the ravine. Keith hefted himself out of the water, and lit up the area with the embers glowing beneath his skin, and the fire licking up his swords. He unsheathed them and stuck them in the dirt, looking up at the blackened sky.

“That should distract the guy for a bit,” he said. “They’ll be able to tell that I opened a portal, though, so work fast.”

“On it,” Lance said scooping up water and freezing it as it fell. He tipped the spike over and dragged his hands over it, drawing water in from all sides of the narrow creek. It clung to the spike he had made, and elongated it. 

Keith climbed to the top of the ravine as Lance worked. The world was washed over in red as his vision adapted to the darkness. In a matter of a second, he could see the Forest in its entirity again, and he could feel each soul writhing in worry as the corruptions brushed against them, wrapping around their branches on their way to Keith and Lance. There weren’t any workers around—they all fled when the corruption came—which meant Hunk’s soul was likely nothing more than a seed waiting to be planted. 

He remembered how Hunk’s aura felt, and he picked through all of the maturing souls to find the youngest of them, in a patch of new saplings. It would just take one portal jump to get there, but with the corruptions festering across the Forest, he worried about drawing them to the weaker of the souls who were unable to withstand corruptions.

“Keith! It’s done!” Lance called up just as Keith spotted a tendril of shadows crawling his way. 

He looked back down at Lance, and the spear that caught the light of Keith’s flaming swords. It flickered in geometric sections bordered with reds and yellows and blacks as Keith braced his feet and let his mind take hold of the object. 

As he lifted his hands up, the weapon followed with, and soon he had it raised over his head, hands lifted as though physically holding it. A water droplet hissed against his hair, rising up in steam as he positioned his hand on the flattened end of the spike, and aimed the sharp point towards the sky. 

Lance watched from the ravine as Keith threw the ice spike over the trees. It sailed past the white branches and between the leaves in a gust of wind that pushed Lance back into the dried up creek. The momentum sent Keith staggering forward, clutching at a nearby tree as they waited for impact. The corruptions were still spiraling towards them through the trees, until the moment the spear pierced the heart of them all.

The sound of their hissing waned, and it was followed by the ice crashing into the ground with a thunderous _crack!_

The blackened clouds broke away, and cleared. Smoke filled the air, and thinned as it reached the red sky. Lance hurriedly climbed up the ravine, and reached for Keith as he got to the top. Keith helped him up, and with a snap of his fingers, he summoned his swords back into their sheathes. Lance waited for the darkness to come again, but that seemed to be the last of them.

“We should check on the main portal, make sure there aren’t any others left,” Keith said, but stopped when Lance tugged on his arm.

Lance jumped up, crashing into him with his arms around Keith’s neck, and his lips on Keith’s. He linked his fingers through Keith’s soft hair, and breathed in the scent of it all—the damp soil of the Forest, the hot energy from Keith’s skin, down to the rainwater still lingering in Lance’s hair. All of the pent up desperation to love Keith released itself, and Lance slumped tiredly into his arms with one last languid kiss on Keith’s shocked lips.

Keith tried to close his mouth, but it just fell open again.

“What was that for?” he asked, clinging to Lance’s torso as they stood together beside the ravine.

Lance tucked his head against Keith’s shoulder. “For forgetting you. For going to Shiro’s territory without asking. For being so difficult with you back on Earth,” he said. He pushed away slightly, eyes tinged red as he sniffed and shook Keith by the shoulders. “I promise I won’t ever put you through that again. I made a mistake, and—”

“I’d go through anything to get you back,” Keith told him. “Don’t apologize. Something fucked up was bound to happen with my father anyways.”

They both laughed, and nestled their heads together. Lance couldn’t stand to be farther than an inch from Keith’s face, smiling giddier than he’d ever been when he realized how much Keith had done for him. 

Lance laughed, shaking his head at Keith as he said, “I can’t believe you wore _jeans_. _Jeans!_ And I never realized how momentous of an occasion it was!”

“Fuck off—at least we went on those pointless Earth dates you love so much,” Keith said, laughing at the distain on Lance’s face. “I’m kidding! I really enjoyed them. You were cute for a human.”

“Cute for a human!” Lance howled, throwing his head back with a laugh before gasping in horror. “Cute humans! _Fuck_ , where’s Hunk? Can you get him back?!”

Keith blinked, and scowled, “Even when you’ve got your memory back, you _still_ think Hunk’s hot.”

“Now’s not the time to be jealous! Help me find him!” Lance demanded, only to squeal when the ground dropped out from beneath them. _Gods_ , did he hate it when Keith opened shadow portals on the ground. Lance much preferred them acting like doors to other realms.

 

. . .

 

Keith carried Hunk’s seed in his pocket as they followed Pidge’s note relating the location of Hunk’s death—the exact moment Hunk’s soul left his body, and receded into the Underworld. Lance clung to Keith as they arrived at the house, just outside the bedroom where they could hear someone screaming. It wasn’t either of them, but Keith recognized the voice well enough to realize that Lance’s human counterpart was back. 

“Stay here,” Keith whispered, pulling his arm out from Lance’s embrace. He pulled the seed from his pocket and pushed inside Lance’s bedroom. 

He didn’t waste a second—he waved his hand in front of Lance’s counterpart, urging him to fall asleep. He lowered the man down onto the bed before hurrying to Hunk’s side. His soul was seeping out, and the instant it was totally gone, Keith pressed the seed to Hunk’s chest and hoped he knew what he was doing. Everything inside of him said that this would be the way—this was how they would get Hunk back.

It took a moment for the seed to take root. Once it did, though, the color returned to Hunk’s face. Hunk gasped aloud, coughing and sputtering up black soot from the corruptions. Keith gave him a moment before waving his gloved hand in front of Hunk’s face. Hunk stared at him, eyes wide, before his lids lowered. Drowsiness brought him down, and into Keith’s arms when he hefted Hunk up and carried him out of the room. 

“Did it work?” Lance asked, hurrying to look down at Hunk. He pressed his hands to Hunk’s brown cheeks, and Keith tried everything in his power to keep his skin from burning through the gloves with jealousy. 

“Yes,” he sighed, and walked Hunk to the bedroom next door. “Your counterpart is asleep. They’ll wake up and think they both just had horrible nightmares.”

“Oh gods, I was so worried,” Lance said with a relieved laugh. Keith laid Hunk down at the same moment the front door burst open. 

Keith looked up in time to see Lance tackled from the side by Acxa screaming, “ _I knew you were back! I knew it!_ ” Lance clung to her as she clung to him, all but crying into his hair as she wrapped herself around the solidity of Lance’s godhood again. Keith was quick to realize, upon living with Lance’s godhood again, that humanity felt so definite in their fragility. He feared breaking Lance because the end became clear. If Lance never returned to the Underworld, he’d grow old and die, and Keith would feel inclined to revisit every moment he had with human Lance until that man became insignificant. Stretching something so definite to an indefinite end— _human_ Lance, unable to bend and flex and change the branches of existence from their paradox—was where meaningless spawned.

And now, with Lance’s permanent infinity, his flexibility, his uncharted tree of indefinite possibilities branching off… he was unbreakable. He was timeless. 

He was everything meant for Keith, and everything meant for Lance.

 

. . .

 

The next time Lance stepped through the portal over the space where he recalled Keith’s foyer being, he realized that this was entirely different from every other time he spent at Keith’s estate. The simple difference:

The estate was no longer there. 

Instead, there was a crater, without a spec of the estate left aside from the statues sitting out in the front lawn. There was standing water in the crater, and Lance stepped straight into it with a look of alarm. The water soaked up through his socks and slacks as he crossed his arms and twisted around to look at where Keith was collecting water in clouds of steam. 

“Are you kidding me?” Lance said, gesturing wildly at the size of the crater. “What the fuck did you do to this place?”

Keith cringed. He was more transparent than he thought. Lance didn’t even waste a second exposing his guiltiness. 

Before Keith could get out a word in his defense, they both heard a warped sound come from the portal above them. Keith looked up to it, and groaned aloud when he saw none other than Takashi step through. His brother looked down at the mess, and lowered himself down to the rim of the crater so he could cross his arms and scowl down at them from where they stood in the puddle.

“What are you doing here?” Keith seethed, storming out of the water and climbing up the side of the crater. Takashi waited for him to collect himself.

Lance followed him up, lagging slightly behind as Takashi lifted his chin up when Keith stormed into his space with a furious scowl. “You can’t just barge in here uninvited!” 

Takashi narrowed his eyes. “I’m never invited.”

“Exactly,” Keith huffed, crossing his arms. Lance tipped his head at them, and briefly acknowledged the fact that they looked incredibly similar. From the short time Lance spent in Shiro’s territory, he was already convinced that the brothers were far more alike than they gave themselves credit for.

“Well, I’m not here to chat for long. I just wanted to see how you and Lance were. Father said he’s pleased that you’ve taken care of the corruption problem all on your own,” he commented, and Keith merely scoffed before noting the sheer amount of irritation on his brother’s face. “But this _clearly_ doesn’t overshadow the fact that _Pidge_ came barging into my territory no more than an hour ago.”

“Already?” Keith gasped. “Wow, she moves quickly.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Takashi hissed, jabbing a finger at Keith’s shoulder. Keith brushed him off, and the moment their skin touched, a sharp hiss rose up, marked by the steam of hot touching cold. “She came to me yelling something about being ‘new business partners.’”

“Please tell me you haven’t talked to Zarkon about this yet,” Lance begged, and Takashi stared at him for a moment, as if preparing to steer the topic elsewhere, but Keith was fast to jab him straight back in the shoulder.

“Well? Did you?” he hissed.

“No, I haven’t,” Takashi confessed, and ducked his head. It took a moment for Lance to realize that Takashi was… _bowing_ towards him. “I wanted to sincerely apologize, Lance, for putting you in such a compromising situation. If Keith hadn’t been able to bring you back… But you’re here now, and I’ll do all I can to prevent that from happening again.”

Lance’s mouth fell open, and he raised a hand up to close it again. Takashi looked up at him, and his earnest eyes had Lance tearing up a little. Keith muttered under his breath, glaring at the both of them. The only thing that would make this scene any more romantic would be if Takashi brought a bouquet of roses to go with that apology.

“Telling Zarkon about your… _deal_ with Pidge,” Takashi continued, glowering at Keith, “would jeopardize Lance’s safety again. But I don’t expect him to look past this. I’m sure he’s already curious about Pidge’s energy signature being in my territory, if he could even recognize it. She isn’t exactly a minor goddess.”

“Good luck hiding that shitshow from him,” Keith scoffed. “Might as well kill the man if you’re planning on keeping it a big fucking secret. Pretty much accepted my fate at being the most hated— _again_. Saving the universe from the corruptions was pretty pointless, now that I think of it.”

“What were you thinking, bringing her into this!” Takashi cried. “The last thing I need is a goddess terrorizing people in their afterlife—she does it enough while they’re alive!”

“It’s not _my fault_. I wouldn’t have gone to her for help if you hadn’t fucked shit up with Lance!” Keith snapped, and groaned as he watched a streak of white frost rise up from the roots of Takashi’s hair. “Why are you so pissed anyways? It’s not like you actually _give a shit_. I could take one look at Allura and tell that—”

Takashi lunged forward, grabbing Keith by the collar. Lance screamed as the force of the attack sent both Takashi and Keith tripping over the edge of the crater. The water froze the instant Takashi’s back landed against it, and when Keith tried to heave him up and slam him back down, Takashi’s cape got caught in it. Keith hesitated, and tightened his grip on the collar of his brother’s arm before yanking it up again. The ice cracked.

“This is fucking ridiculous,” Keith huffed, sitting back. He made sure to shove Takashi on the way. 

“Well, now I’m stuck,” Takashi sighed, laying his arms down. He accepted his fate as the one stuck to the ice where Keith’s estate used to be. “Do you need help rebuilding the place?”

“Fuck no, not from you,” Keith said, but he was tired, and it showed in the sigh that followed shortly after. He sat down against the rocks, and glanced up at where Lance was crouched on the edge of the crater, observing them from afar. 

Lance’s silent pleads weren’t as silent as he thought they were. Keith picked up on it quickly, and turned to glare at Takashi. His brother blinked up at the sky, hair frosted completely white now. 

“Fine… maybe a little help,” Keith caved, picking at his boot. He glanced out of the corner of his eye at Lance, hardly pleased to be pressured into this. Lance beamed at him, and offered a thumbs up. 

“Okay, but you need to get me out of this pickle,” Shiro said, lifting his arms up for Keith to grab hold of.

Keith laughed and said, “I’ll show you _pickle—_ ” and pretended to grab for his trousers before Shiro shrieked, “Oh gods, no! Just get me out of the ice, please!”

Lance watched, laughing under his breath, as Keith stood up and yanked on Shiro’s arms until his cape dislodged from the ice. Afterwards, Keith stomped his foot on the ice and sent it all into steam. He listened from afar as Keith explained details about what the both of them wanted for the new estate.

“—and Lance wanted there to be a porch here because he likes the mountains. An observatory would be nice, and I’m thinking of asking Allura to visit and help with making a water effect on the observatory walls for Lance—”

They used the expired wood from trees that no longer hosted souls. The grain was light and tailored to Lance’s desire for a lighter atmosphere. Lance watched from the forest as the estate materialized from the crater, over the sound of Keith and Takashi screaming at one another from either side of the building area. The observatory raised up in the middle of it all, topped with a glass roof and a bordering railing that encircled it. The instant the front door swung closed, and the stairs emerged from the shimmery, icy surface of Takashi’s magic, Lance was running up them. He pushed inside, and hurried around before Keith could bother stopping him to give a grand tour. He stopped inside the central room, guarded by massive wooden doors, and pushed his way in. It was circular—the shape of the observatory directly above—and gave light to the wooden floor. The glow overhead was sucked into the portals that remained where they always were, only now guarded in an enclosed room.

Lance took the spiral stairs up around the outskirts of the portal room. He hurried to the room beneath the observatory tower, and gasped excitedly at all the windows, and the massive mattress topped with a maroon comforter. The bed frame was elaborately moulded with metal that curved and spiraled into articulate shapes. 

Keith sighed from where he watched Lance bolt into the house. He was still finishing off his side of the house, and impatiently waited for it to finish. He left the remainder of the crater for later—he couldn’t exactly fill it with water himself. 

Before he could run in after Lance, Takashi stopped him at the front door with a hand on his arm. 

“Keith, wait—we need to talk. About our father,” he said, and Keith stopped at the mention. He wished he could just ignore everything that had to do with Zarkon, but he couldn’t. The name always caught his attention, and filled his mind with bitter intentions.

“What about him?” Keith asked. “Can we talk about it later?”

“No, Keith, I—”

“Thanks for helping and all, yada-yada-bullshit, but couldn’t this wait?” he insisted, stomping his foot impatiently.

Takashi grabbed him by the arms, stilling him. It felt like Takashi’s skin was burning through his own, more so than lava might. Sometimes the cold was absolutely searing, and it didn’t help that Takashi’s hair was still completely white.

“No, this can’t wait, Keith,” he said sharply. “You know as well as I do that he won’t forgive you for accepting Pidge’s terms. He won’t accept the blame, either.”

“So what? He’s never forgiven me for existing, in case you haven’t noticed,” Keith said, gesturing to his neck, and the evidence there.

“I know, but… don’t you think that possibly… we might be able to run the Underworld—together? The responsibility would be easier to shoulder with the both of us working together,” Takashi said, and it took a long moment before Keith was able to say anything. 

He looked down at their feet together on the front porch, and then back up to ensure that his brother was being entirely serious. He never expected Takashi to take his side in… _anything_. He folded his arms and looked out at the lawn full of statues. 

“I can’t… I can’t tell if you’re serious,” Keith said. 

“I am—”

“It’s not just you saying it,” he said, shaking his head. “You’ve never… This isn’t like you. And I don’t expect you to prove that you’ve changed at all, but… I’m already on Zarkon’s shit list. I guess there’s no redeeming myself—might as well make the most of it.”

“Really? You’d be willing to do it?” Takashi said, jaw dropping. Keith nodded, and cracked a smile when Takashi hollered, punching his fists into the air. 

“What’s gotten you to be so rebellious?” Keith laughed, and felt his heart leap into his throat the instant Takashi swept him into a hug. He wasn’t as opposed to hugging, now that Lance acclimated him to it, but hugging Takashi was weird and foreign. They’d never hugged before this, but he figured he’d just have another thing to hold over his brother’s head now.

Keith laughed and pushed himself out of the embrace. “I get that your excited, but can we _please_ continue this conversation later?”

Takashi glanced at the half-open front door, and smiled. “Yeah, sure. Let me know when you’re free.”

Keith opened his mouth to respond, only to shut it in annoyance when Takashi walked off, snickering. Takashi pushed inside and headed for the portal room before Keith could think to say anything that wouldn’t rat him out. He burned red, and wished his brother was as prude as he made himself out to be. 

_Even when he’s on my side he’s mean_ , he mused, and stormed into the house after Takashi.

He stopped in the foyer and crossed his arms. It’d been _decades_ , perhaps even _centuries_ since he last had to rebuild his estate. It was disorienting being introduced to such a new setting, but after everything, after spending so much time on Earth, it didn’t feel so farfetched to have something different. 

He called out Lance’s name, but when he got no response, he searched for the staircase that led up to the observatory—the main feature of the house that Lance demanded. He got halfway when he reached the suite, and stopped at the foot of the next staircase to glance across the room. 

He froze, captured by the image of Lance lain out across the comforter. Lance stretched his arms out, and reached towards Keith, bare back arching. He sighed, dropping his head onto his arms with a smile.

“Thank _gods_. I was afraid Takashi might have followed you,” Lance confessed, giggling as he reached back and ripped the towel off of his bare ass. “Guess I don’t need to cover up then.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Keith laughed, crossing his arms as he took a step into the room, and stopped.

Lance groaned and said, “How do you have _any_ self control?! Just thinking about you in jeans gets me going, but I saw you literally _every day_.”

“It gets you going when I wear jeans?” Keith blurted out.

“ _That’s_ what you focus on?”

He stuck his nose in the air. “I developed self-control.”

“Well, un-develop it and get over here,” Lance demanded.

“First you demand an entire house, and now you’re demanding sex.”

“Logical order of things.”

Keith grinned, and walked over. At each step, he shed another layer of his armor before ending at his undergarments. Lance stretched out on the bed, and sighed into the soft comforter as he waited. He clutched at the blankets and said, “I missed the Underworld so much and I didn’t even know it. Seeing Earth was nice, but I much prefer this.”

Keith leaned over him, climbing onto the bed as he laid open-mouthed kisses to Lance’s languid spine. “Really? I’m surprised.”

“How could you be surprised? I’ve _told you_ how much I love the Forest,” Lance said, voice hitching when Keith reached the nape of his neck, and breathed in the scent of Lance’s hair. “I’m so glad I bolted in after you in that portal.”

“Hm… why’s that?”

“Because I turned back because of it,” Lance sighed. “Why didn’t you think to bring me back sooner?”

Keith hesitated, and smiled against Lance’s hair. “The Underworld turned you back?” he asked, and Lance hummed in agreement, as if this was a necessary statement. 

Keith considered telling the truth, but was amused by Lance’s innocence. “Sure… the Underworld turned you back. I should have brought you here sooner had I known,” he said.

“It’s okay—I forgive you,” Lance said, twisting around to wrap his arms around Keith’s neck. 

Keith’s smile widened, and he pressed his lips to Lance’s cheek. He kissed Lance’s cheek and said, “I love you.”

He pulled back to see the way Lance’s face lit up. 

“I love you, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EYYY that signals the end of THIS adventure :D 
> 
> I'm working on a new fic with my buddy [llstarcasterll](http://llstarcasterll.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr that we started a while ago and never finished. I've been cranking through it this past week, and the moment she gets her AO3 account set up, we're posting the first chapter. So, if you're interested in VOLLEYBALL AUS, SUMMER, TATTOO PARLORS, and COLLEGE AUS, then stay tuned :D
> 
> [Fight me on Tumblr :)](http://girlskylark.tumblr.com/)


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